Social media have become a key element in our everyday lives, allowing people to connect with their families and friends. Apps such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are major social-media platforms where people communicate with their friends and relatives. TikTok and Instagram, specifically, are platforms where users can share photos and short videos with their friends or the general public. With the rise of social media, there has been the emergence of people referred to as influencers, who are more like vloggers. However, these apps have also caused people to become extremely addicted and attached to their devices, leading to the coining of the term “screenagers”. Researchers believe that social media are making people less social and more reliant on their devices as a means of communication, but is it actually?

The first-ever social-media app was a Web site called sixdegress.com. This app was used to send international messages for strictly business purposes. However, as time went on, teens started to get hooked on the site. The company began to fall apart as time went on and the emergence of social media began. 

YouTube, one of today’s biggest social-media companies, generates trillions of dollars per year and has many purposes, such as education and entertainment. 

Social media really began to flourish and become what it is today around 2010. Instagram and Snapchat were all released around this time. Snapchat, one of the biggest social-media apps, is known to cause loneliness and depression, especially in teens and young adults. Snapchat has a feature that is unlike any social media app, where the chat the user sends to their contacts is only up for a certain amount of time, making it hard for parents to monitor the usage and context of messages being sent and received. Foolishly, many children believe that this feature is a way to bully and make fun of people without anyone knowing. 

The real question remains: “Is social media causing people to be less social?” The answer, in my opinion, is yes, because many users of these platforms nowadays would prefer to stay inside their homes scrolling through social-media feeds instead of hanging out with their friends and interacting face to face. Scientific research has also shown that children who have higher rates of screen time are also more likely to suffer from depression. Many doctors have said that people are starting to rely on social media too much and are lacking in common social skills since so much of what they do goes on behind a screen.

Social media even has an effect on physical health, with children, teens and young adults starting to become much more obese since technology has becoming increasingly prevalent. People more often sit in their rooms all day and stare at screens as opposed to exercising, riding bikes and spending time outside. Although doctors believe that screen time on phones should be limited to at most two hours per day, the average American’s screen time is five hours a day. 

For better or for worse, the world will always rely on social media. It has allowed us to extend our communication beyond anything we ever thought possible. The world would not be the same without social media, but I think we would all agree that there should be a limit to the use of social media, especially for kids and teenagers.