Negative impact of Facebook on Mental health

Social media is one of the most effective and powerful tools of communication in our world nowadays. It cannot be denied that social media made the world a more opened and connected place and eased the communication between people. There are many different social media platforms for people to express their opinions and thoughts in different fields such as; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. However, it has been proven that social media has many negative effects on people as it is addictive and could be a way to develop and lead to different issues such as; anxiety , low self-esteem , cyberbullying and depression (Stonecioher, 2018).  

As social media has a lot of power over people’s minds and influences their daily lives and decisions, it could come with harmful costs. Facebook is one of the most popular and most used social media platform among the youth and adults, people use Facebook for many different purposes. For instance, for sharing news, sharing thoughts on specific topics, expressing ideas and talents. According to Stonecipher (2018), Facebook has many negative effects on the mental health of its users as a study proved that 70% of people suffer from mental health issues caused from the usee of Facebook .For instance, it is an open place for opinions so people could spread judgments on anything which could lead to causing low self-esteem and depression for people who receive negative comments and judgments on their posts or pictures. In addition, Facebook is another platform for people to show off their life updates, their accomplishments so, it could be a way to create stereotypes of how someone should look like or how someone should be living their life (Dolan, 2018).

For many people Facebook was a platform that helped in expressing their feelings freely and communicate better with the opinions of the friends and family as it is as easy and accessible way for all ages to use which leads to an exposure to different opinions and accepting them. Moreover, a lot of people see Facebook as a good place to show their talents and be able to get feedback about their work. In addition, there are some people who post on Facebook to get the attention and support that they don’t get in real life which makes them feel more relevant and increase their self-esteem (Townley, 2019)   

There are a lot of people who claim that Facebook has been a source of positivity and support for them and also there are people who claim that when they post pictures or their ideas on Facebook and receive a lot of likes and support they feel encouraged and gain more self-confidence. However, it was proven that Facebook has been a source of depression, anxiety and lack of self-confidence for people who don’t get to express or portray themselves in a positive way and for people who receive negative comments and reacts on their posts as nowadays people are defined by how many likes and comments they would get on their posts and that makes people who receive a smaller amount of love and support that they are failures or they are not good enough. Moreover, it was proven that a lot of people only post the positive things about their lives and leave out the negative ones to create a more favorable image of themselves (Dolan, 2018).

To conclude, even though Facebook has a lot of positive purposes to be used for and as much as it is hard to believe but , Facebook is a platform that created many serious issues. It is a double- edged sword that if is used for seeking attention could turn into a self-destructive method. People should trust that most of what is shown on social media and Facebook does not have to be the reality and that people tend to filter the negativity out of their lives on social media and choose to only show the positive and the bight sides from it and also more awareness should be raised about the consequences that Facebook causes and people should be careful and less aggressive when expressing their opinion. 

Malak Osama

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