Is Social Media Creating a Toxic Educational Environment? -Benjamin Sargent-

The short YouTube documentary “PLUGGED IN : The True Toxicity of Social Media Revealed” really helps highlight some of the potential problems that occur relating to mental health and social media. It does a great job explaining how really anyone can be affected, but throughout the short film, a recurring thought kept coming to my head. That thought was taking all these negative impacts of social media, and applying it to a close knit community of high schoolers, kids who are totally underdeveloped, without a real sense of the world. That in itself sounds like chaos ready to happen. When you have a decent sized group of teenagers, teenagers who already are not confident, unaware, and full of new emotions or feelings, and you implement something as powerful as social media into the community, toxicity is waiting to happen. I think a lot of people can agree with this, whether it be from an outside perspective or from experience. When social media becomes more of a reality than the actual world around them, I believe acts like suicide start happening, I believe drug abuse becomes more frequent, and I believe depression and anxiety absolutely sky rocket.

A couple quotes or segments from the film really captured my attention and made me think. There is a segment where it seems as if a few people are in a meeting, discussing the direction of the documentary and their personal experiences, one man speaks on his experiences and says “If you love yourself, you believe in yourself”. This caught my attention because personally I can relate. Although no one would want to admit it, I think most have had a moment where they start to question themselves, whether that be looks, morals, or personality due to social media. This could happen subconsciously or consciously, but it strips one from their beliefs and ideas. That's when one really starts to feel detached from themselves. When you lose your own confidence in not just yourself, but the way you think, confusion, depression, anxiety, and all the above are bound to happen.

Claudia Cockerill- “Most likes I get are on selfies, and if I post something about seeing a band I like, or a scenic view, I get like half the likes, and it encourages you to post more self obsessed things, focus on your personal appearance, rather than what you're interested in or parts of your personality. It can diminish your personality.”

When you picture all of this within a school setting, it seems impossible for real learning to happen, or for real passion to ignite in a student. When there's clearly so much distraction and such a fight to keep attention, can you really blame students? Reality shifts from the things around them to the things in their phone. This is why teachers and the ones in charge need to be having a consistent conversation about this. I think this issue can be a lot deeper than some realize, not only that, the long term effects are still unknown.

When it comes to the problem of social media causing toxicity among kids in school, there is no set solution. There is no magic pill that will take us out of our phones, nor is there an innovative invention to really guide us. It boils down to continuing the conversation, and keeping it a consistent one. Communication and honesty is gonna allow for people to be more aware of what they are doing and how it affects themselves and everyone around them. I remember from lower school, the idea of cyberbullying and treating each other right was constantly in topic, but I never heard anything about the social media companies themselves, or the ways in which they provoke feelings. Talking about how we treat each other online is meaningful, but actually talking about the problem itself is more important.

“In a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook, which owns Instagram, acknowledged that they know the platform is toxic for teens” -Courier Times

"The Pew Research Center’s 2018 survey of U.S. teens determined that one in six teenagers have experienced at least one of six different forms of abusive behavior online:

-Name-calling (42%)

-Spreading false rumors (32%)

-Receiving unsolicited explicit images (25%)

-Having their activities and whereabouts tracked by someone other than a parent (21%)

-Someone making physical threats (16%)

-Having explicit images of them shared without their consent (7%)"