“In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless…surged 33 percent in large national surveys.” (The Washington Post). In todays world, social media plays a big role in our lives. From chatting with your friends to scrolling on short funny reels, its quite simple to do everything online. However, have you ever given thought to how social media–particularly for young, aspiring people like us–affects our emotional well-being and our mental health? Transfiguring the way we interact with one another, platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram have been growing concerns on if the intake of this media is becoming harmful. Mental health issues in teens is a serious issue and is not talked about enough, especially because people are afraid to speak out. What needs to be recognized, is that social media influences mental health issues in youth, as it causes self-consciousness and has been linked to the rise of depression and anxiety cases. 
 
Again and again, kids around the world have been falling to illnesses like depression. It’s became a common pattern and it something needs to change. Creating a false reality and showing people living an amazing life, social media makes teens insecure about their own lives and they develop FOMO (fear of missing out). Further research has disclosed that “[Gen Z] teenagers were also more likely to perceive themselves as overweight or obese compared to their older counterparts at the same age [33% to 26%].” (Daily Telegraph). They show the direct correlation between depression and these insecurities; “Among Generation Z, those who perceived themselves to have a high BMI were more likely to be depressed aged 14 compared to similar [millenial] adolescents a decade earlier.” (Daily Telegraph). This evidence shows us how social media is linked to the rise of depression and mental health issues.
Next, teens all over the world are becoming very self-conscious and they worry about how they look. Kids are on social media seeing other supermodels and unrealistic body figures everywhere, and they become insecure about how they look. Research done by university college London and Liverpool University argues that “more likely to be worried about body image, and be overweight…Lower self worth and body confidence has been linked to increased social media use.” (Qtd in Daily Telegraph). Another source reveals how social media is, “inviting them [girls and young women] to ‘compare and despair’ as they scrolled through posts from friends and strangers showing faces, bodies and lives that had been edit and re-edited until many were closer to perfection than to reality.” (New York Times) These artices prove how social media can control teens’ emotions, and how the content we are consuming (which can be misleading and fabricated) can make us feel worse about ourselves. It truly reveals how social media influences insecurities within teenagers. Some may say that social media is good for kids because it’s a way for them to interact with each other and meet new people! While this may be partially true, studies show how, “Interacting with people face to face is one of the deepest wellsprings of human happiness; without it, our moods start to suffer and depression often follows….We found that teens who spent more time than average online and less time than average with friends in person were the most likely to be depressed.” (The Washington Post). This evidence clearly provides us with the information needed to conclude that high social media use can lead to social isolation. We can conclude that social media can play a negative roll in teens’ social skills and mental health, contrary to popular belief.
 
            Social media is becoming a bigger part of teens’ daily lives and it keeps advancing. A significant rise in depression cases and self image issues is strongly correlated with the rise of social media use. It’s important to recognize how social media really controls teens’ emotions, and the way teens think. Once we understand the ways social media is affecting our health, we can then take a proper approach to regulating our screen time. This paints a bigger picture as it can be related to many other aspects in life, like self-control. We make over thousands of decisions daily that affect how our life will play out, but let’s ask ourselves the bigger question, Are you making the right decision?