The Effect of Social Media on Kids

By Rimzim Bhaskarwar

Social media has become a giant part of kids’ lives nowadays. Different platforms such as Snapchat, Tiktok, and Instagram have become thoroughly integrated into children's everyday life. While social media allows people to connect with others, it can harm the kids’ both mental and physical health.

Mental Health Problems

Many recent studies have shown that increased social media use in children can cause anxiety, stress and low-self esteem. Mainly low self esteem is caused by unrealistic standards set by people on social media. Children who use social media are constantly exposed to people that have filtered their bodies which makes them more likely to have lower self esteem. In addition to that, social media can pressure children into having anxiety over the comments they can recieve over their posts on social media.

Physical Health Problems

While many parents believe that the main problem of social media is the effect it can have on children' s mental health, it can actually lead to many physical problems as well such as obesity, eye strain, poor posture, sleep disruption and diminished physical activities. Spending a lot of time, consistently, on a a cellular device can lower the amount of physical activity which can lead to obesity and poor posture. This can lead to a very poor lifestyle. In addition, social media causes sleep deprivation which has become a giant issue in children. This can affect a child’s sleep pattern and because of this it can cause a child to fall asleep in school which can result in less concentration in school.

Conclusion

Social media plays a huge role in children nowadays and parents should be careful when giving social media to young kids. Even though social media is supposed to become a way of connecting people around the world, social media can cause many problems for children.