The Effects of Social Media on Interpersonal Relationships

 

    Do you know how long you spend on your Instagram on a daily basis? Quite shockingly, according to the statistics, on average, a person spends around half an hour daily and 8 months of lifetime on Instagram, Yaqub (2023). Is it beneficial, though, to spend so much time on the seemingly no harm app for social interaction? In fact, social media such as Instagram, Facebook or Tiktok can lead to inefficiency of school work, mental health concerns and social isolation issues. 

 

    To begin with, inefficiency of school work is often caused by constantly checking social media. Almost always, we don’t actually have a specific reason to check on it. We simply think of it as a way to kill our time or relieve our stress; However, social media is created to make us feel addicted to it. When we scroll down the page of social media and something intriguing comes up, a substance called dopamine will be released. It’s a substance that gives us temporary merriment, and it’s what makes us so addicted to it. Thus, whenever we feel stressed out from doing school tasks such as assignments or reports, high chances are that we would turn to social media and attempt to gain enjoyment from it. At the end of the day; however, we would only find ourselves doing nothing but escaping the tasks we needed to do. Even if we’ve never thought much about it, this tiny deed of clicking on the app and scrolling is gradually eating away our time and consequently leads to inefficiency in school work. 

 

    Furthermore, not only can social media cause inefficiency, but also mental health concerns. More precisely, constantly comparing ourselves to people on social media can contribute to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. People always show the best of themselves on social media and make others think they are the definition of “perfection”. Therefore, when we scroll down our social media, we would probably find ourselves falling into the trap of self-doubt, thinking “I’m such a loser”. If we let this kind of toxic thoughts affect our mind, we would probably have a really low self-esteem. Since we’d feel like no matter how hard we try, we would never be as successful as others. Nonetheless, it’s not the truth. Amusingly, we are always comparing our weak side to others' strengths. Everyone has bright and dark sides in their life. But the dark side is almost never shown on social media. Thus, spending excessive time on social media could contribute to severe mental health issues, as we constantly underrate ourselves and compete ourselves with others.

    

    Finally, when you converse with people online way more than in real life, you might end up having social isolation issues. Accustomed to not having to communicate with others in person, we lost the ability to interact with others in daily life. Moreover, we would even start to ignore the significant others’ needs if we spend an excessive amount of time on social media. “ Compulsive users of social media tend to isolate,” According to LEE HEALTH (2023) “They’re chasing that constant reward system, which can lead to interpersonal problems, such as ignoring real-life relationships, work or school responsibilities, and one’s physical health.” This demonstrates how devastating the misuse of social media can be. Sometimes, we might encounter someone who is active online but extremely shy in real life, or is indifferent to other people as a result of social media. That’s the possible destruction it could cause.

 

    Thanks to social media, we get to converse with each other more efficiently than ever before. However, if we don’t use it wisely, we would be inclined to procrastinate, tend to have mental health issues, and isolate ourselves from other people. To increase our overall living quality, are you willing to try using social media for less time now? 

 

References,

Yaqub, M. (2023). Average Time Spent on Instagram Per Day Statistics. 

Retrieved from: https://www.businessdit.com/time-spend-instagram-statistics/  

Name of the author/organization. (2023). Are You Addicted to Social Media?

Retrieved from: https://www.leehealth.org/health-and-wellness/healthy-news-blog/mental-health/are-you-addicted-to-social-media