Lost in the Scroll: Navigating Adolescence in the Age of Social Media.

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Let’s be honest—social media has completely changed the way we live. It has its good sides, no doubt, but it also comes with a lot of negativity. And if there’s any group that feels this the most, it’s the adolescents. At that stage of life, you're just trying to figure yourself out, and social media can either help you grow or mess with your head.

From what I’ve seen and even experienced myself, a lot of young people tend to get more affected by the negative side of social media than the positive. Adolescents are still growing mentally and emotionally, so it’s easy for them to get influenced by the things they see online. I usually say this: the things we consume with our eyes and minds are just like food. If you keep feeding yourself junk, you’ll eventually feel sick or have running stomach. It’s the same with constantly seeing content that makes you feel less than or not good enough.

During my own adolescent years, I was more serious about using social media. Instagram was my frequently visited app. I could spend hours scrolling through celebrity pages, admiring their lifestyles, and just wishing I had their kind of life. I’d even go as far as checking who they followed, who liked their posts, and all that unnecessary stuff. I didn’t realize it then, but I was slowly losing my sense of self. I wanted to be like people I didn’t even know. But then, looking back now, I can clearly see that many of those celebrities I admired were not always promoting the best values either.

One thing i normally say is that social media isn’t real. It has this way of making everything look perfect—even when it’s not. A lot of what people post is carefully selected and edited. But when you’re young, you might not see that. You just think, “Why isn’t my life like this?” And that's how anxiety and depression start to creep in for these young lads. They start to feel like they are not doing enough or that their life is boring compared to everyone else’s.

This is why I believe parents and older siblings really have a role to play because, let's be realistic, it is not possible to ban them completely from using social media. So, instead, they should be trained on how to use it wisely and focus on the useful side. There are literally teenagers out there using social media to build businesses, share their talents, and make a real impact, and they can be brought up to also follow that same path.

At the end of the day, social media is here to stay. It’s part of our daily lives now. So the most important and key thing is just teaching the adolescents how to use it in a way that builds them up instead of tearing them down.

Thanks for reading.

Posted Using INLEO