Emma Zabinsky

Madison Elkins

English 101: Intersections of Image and Text

21 November 2017

A Reason to Look Twice at Things: Really How Beneficial is Social Media Networking for

Teenagers?

What is it about Facebook that makes it so necessary in the lives of teenagers? Does

posting on Instagram improve well-being? Social media networking among adolescents has been

an area of major contention throughout this past decade — specifically during the past four or

five years. Parents have begun buying cellphones for their children at younger ages in order to

allow them fast communication as well as the ability to fit in. With cellphones come the many

social networking sites with which teens obsess. However, the prevalence of social media

inevitably raises questions of safety, necessity, and value. While networking helps teens

communicate and keep up with each other’s lives, is it socially and emotionally healthy? Do the

benefits really outweigh the detriments? Not exactly. Social media networking proves more

detrimental than beneficial for adolescents — its widespread presence poses a threat to teens’

innocence and negatively impacts their emotional development. As such, teens tend to lose

confidence, devalue family relationships and education, and engage in risky behaviors.

Both parents and teenagers can agree that social media is not all fun and games — most

teenagers’ emotional development is impacted in one way or another as a result of usage. The

photos and posts teens post on social media generally portray happiness and attractiveness —

qualities that do not accurately reflect teens’ daily lives and that consequently make others feel

badly about their own beauty and happiness. For example, teenagers are more likely to post a

Zabinsky 1

meal at a fancy restaurant or beach resort than they are to post a picture doing something

ordinary, such as attending school or eating breakfast in their kitchen at home. Further, this

creates jealousy and disappointment with some teens’ own lives because they may not have the

same privileges that others post about. This resulting sadness is what some social scientists have

coined “Facebook Depression” — a condition in which teens feel depressed about and

unsatisfied with their own boring-seeming lives in comparison with their peers’ (O’Keefe and

Clarke-Pearson). Moreover, teenagers should enjoy exciting events in their lives because this

promotes happiness. However, they do not need to show their privileges on social media in order

to feel this happiness. In other words, there are ways to feel good about oneself without sharing

the experience on social media, which teenagers have seemed to forget about.

Social media’s detrimental impact on teens’ emotional development can also be seen

through girls’ negative body images and low confidence levels. When teenage girls post photos

of themselves on social media, such as Instagram and Facebook, they often concern themselves

with looking skinny and beautiful. The desire to impress others has led many girls to use body-

morphing applications such as FaceTune in order to make themselves appear skinnier and more

flawless. This is extraordinarily problematic because teenage girls thus have low enough self-

esteem that they feel the need to change their appearances for the eyes of others. Consider Figure

1, in which a frightened looking girl (who is naturally quite skinny) is looking for a “skinny

filter”. Her mindset is one of someone with low self-esteem, and she feels that she must change

her appearance with a technology — that is similar to many of the illegal technologies used by

magazine body editors — in order to relieve her anxiety and feel comfortable with others seeing

her. Such a mindset creates a rippling effect of self-conscious girls who have difficulty finding

Zabinsky 2

contentedness with their body images because they never feel as though they match up with

other girls and the photos that they post.

Fig.1. Science: Social Media Is Bad For Your Bod. 12 May 2016. Yahoo.com. Web.

Furthermore, social media use among teens leads to depressions that may not exist should these

networks not exist. The possible short-term benefits of using social media such as communicating

and learning, are undermined by these detriments, for no teenager needs extra sadness in his her or

life during such a formative time. In fact, not only are teens’ emotional developments negatively

impacted by social media, but their innocence and values are also stripped.

When teens are consistently surrounded by social media, they lose their innocence through

consequential acts, such as engaging in the sexting phenomenon and by participating in other illegal,

risky behaviors. Young children do not generally use social media, so it is when people reach their

teenage years that social media tends to become pervasive. In general, the teenage years are

Zabinsky 3

associated with the gaining of new freedoms, such as the ability to go places independently and to be

trusted with certain jobs and responsibilities. Thus, the additional freedoms social media gives to

teens is unnecessary and inherently leads to loss of innocence, as teens are able to engage in risky

conversations without authority knowing. For example, teens are able to keep private their

conversations on applications, such as Snapchat, so teens feel comfortable exposing nude photos to

others via this application (O’Keefe and Clarke-Pearson). Sexting poses a clear danger for teens —

once someone sends a picture of him or herself, the picture is there forever — nothing on social

media disappears. This is not only unhealthy in that teens as well as all people should keep their

bodies private except for very specific circumstances, but it is also illegal. Teens thus deal with the

emotional and social consequences of their exposure as well as legal consequences that affect their

lives later on. Invents such as Snapchat have made these illegal actions more convenient and thus

have made them more popular among teens, decreasing their well-being.

Evidence of risky behaviors among teens is also seen through statistical findings of social

scientists. Case Western Reserve University studied the prevalence of social media use among teens

and found that teens send excessive numbers of texts each day (especially during the school day,

when they should be learning). In addition, these teens who text excessively are more likely to have

smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, and used other illegal drugs. The study also reports that a large

number of teens spend more than three hours each day using social media, contributing to their lack

of sleep and many subsequent health problems (Johnson). The teenage years are important for

learning about the world and the self, and this progress is inhibited by teens’ addiction to social media

and the consequential risky behaviors.

As a result of social media use, teenagers also tend to devalue their parents’ as well as their

own opinions, and they thus lose some of their ability to think for themselves. It is very often that

Zabinsky 4

when distracted by social media, teens begin ignoring their parents and what they have to say. This is

unfortunate because most of the time, parents look out for the well-being of their children and truly

want what is best for them. So, when teens devalue their parents’ thoughts, they not only hurt their

parents’ feelings but also hurt their own chances of success and happiness. The reason teenagers

devalue their parents’ opinions is because they feel that social media is a socializing agent which they

have far more control over. In comparison, their parents (as socializing agents) exert far more control,

and with social media, they feel they have freedom. As seen in Figure 2, teenagers often look down at

their phones and shush their parents, often hurting their feelings and making them angry.

Fig. 2. Teen Ignoring Mother. Goodtherapy.org. 3 Sept. 2015. Web.

Moreover, teenagers lose some respect for the people in their lives that care about them the most and

who want the best for them. Without the invent of so many networks, teenagers would have an easier

time maintaining these important relationships.

Zabinsky 5

Teenagers not only lose respect for their parents’ opinions but also their own opinions.

Research has shown that a teenager is more likely to “like” someone’s photo on Instagram if the most

has already received a lot of likes. In contrast, if the post does not seem to have appealed to others

(has less likes), the teen is often hesitant to like the photo. This was seen through adolescents who

underwent fMRIs, as their neural structures most associated with reward, imitation, and attention

were busier when viewing photos with more likes than with less likes (Sherman, Payton, Hernandez,

Greenfield, and Dapretto). These findings are associated with teens’ tendencies toward peer pressure

and influencing one another. Here, a teenager is less likely to ask him or herself whether or not he or

she actually likes a particular picture and instead like it simply because others have done the same.

Forming one’s own opinions and learning to be independent of certain influences is an important skill

in life, and social media plays a role in the inhibition of this skill. Although there are some benefits of

social media, its role in teens’ devaluing of their own opinions is a clear negative.

All of the aforementioned negative consequences are applicable for teens of all races,

classes, and backgrounds, regardless of particular circumstances. One notable positive quality of

social media networking for adolescents, is the opportunity it poses for low-income teenagers. Low-

income teens lack many resources to be informed about certain job opportunities and social events.

Therefore, with social media networking, they are better able to compete and discuss in forums with

teenagers from all different statuses and backgrounds (Micheli). While this is undoubtedly a positive

attribute of social media, it does not account for many of the problems networking creates among

teens of all classes. Just because social media provides an opportunity for low-income teens who may

not otherwise have learned about certain ideas or participated in certain discussions, the low-income

teens still face the same detrimental consequences as do the high-income teens that result from the

topics of, for instance, Facebook Depression. In fact, perhaps low-income teens experience Facebook

Zabinsky 6

Depression more than high-income teens do, as low-income teens may not have the privilege to eat at

as many restaurants or to explore such a variety of places.

Ultimately, while there are undoubtedly positive aspects of social media for teenagers, such

as increased communication and learning opportunities, the negatives outweigh the positives greatly.

Prior to this decade, teenagers thrived without these networks and were less concerned with their

body images and online appearances because these online sites did not exist. Moreover, social media

has become an unnecessary stressor in the lives of teens, and it has driven them away from their

values and rather driven them towards risky behaviors that decrease health and happiness.

Zabinsky 7

Works Cited

Micheli, Marina. "Social Networking Sites and Low-income Teenagers: Between Opportunity

and Inequality." Information, Communication & Society 19.5 (2016): 565-81. Web.

O'keeffe, G. S., and K. Clarke-Pearson. "The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents,

and Families." Pediatrics 127.4 (2011): 800-04. Web.

Science: Social Media Is Bad For Your Bod. 12 May 2016. Yahoo.com. Web.

Sherman, L. E., A. A. Payton, L. M. Hernandez, P. M. Greenfield, and M. Dapretto. "The Power

of the Like in Adolescence: Effects of Peer Influence on Neural and Behavioral

Responses to Social Media." Psychological Science 27.7 (2016): 1027-035. Web.

Teen Ignoring Mother. Goodtherapy.org. 3 Sept. 2015. Web.

Teens' Excessive Use of Texting, Social Media Linked to Risky Behavior. Annals of the

American Psychotherapy Association. 13, 4, 8, 2010. ISSN: 15354075.

Zabinsky 8