Mental Health Issues Come with Intensive Social Media Use

Undoubtedly, for our digital natives, social media has become an integral part of our lives. Most children may be familiar with technology and the Internet, but you may forget that they are still learning and not equipped to understand the risks and falls of constant contact.

As Laurie and Christina highlighted in their opening statement video: Constantly communicating through social media may have a negative impact on children who are not able to handle emotional stress.
When obsessed with social media, Children may be more inclined to measure their acceptance or receive gratification by the number of ‘likes’ on a status update, instead, a lack of likes on their posts on social media may prompt them to perpetually refresh their social media feeds. With such constantly compulsive use, feelings of anxiety and loneliness would be amplified.

Laurie and Christina also introduced us to the popular concept of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). This phenomenon already happens to me quite a long time. I refresh social media on average every hour. Occasionally after a few hours of continuous concentration on completing something, the first moment of relaxation is often to keep up to date with the activities of my online social circles.

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I agree with what Dean suggested FOMO is not a new phenomenon exclusive to social media, it also happens before Social Media permeating. But according to the study, for children with attention issues, social media may make it worse:

“they tend to become hyper-focused on the screen for extended periods of time. They find mobile devices and social media even more consuming than typical adolescents, and it is especially challenging for them to shift their attention to something else. For these children, FOMO can increase dramatically, leading to an increase in ADHD symptoms, depression, unhappiness, and even aggression”.

https://www.childnexus.com/blog/article/fomo-and-how-it-might-affect-children-with-attention-issues

When our kids are struggling with these problems, as educators or parents, we may need to help them understand: you can’t really get all the information from the circle of social media, you can’t really keep up with all the trends, you can’t really farewell to loneliness, and you can’t really be the one you carefully dress up. Perhaps what is important about being truly satisfied with what we are in the real world is the moment when we are no longer controlled by the virtual world.