Social Media Seriously Harms Your Mental Health...

In present day and age, social media is a regular and daily part of our lives. It allows us to be connected to anyone from any place around the world. But it’s not always a good thing. Social media has many dangerous and scary downsides that can affect people and their mental health in a very negative way. This includes cyber bullying, cyber stalking, peer pressure and anonymity. In this post, I’m going to talk about how all these topics can relate to each other and how they can affect a person’s mental health.

Cyber bullying is a form of bullying a person that occurs over the internet. Some experts say that this is the worst form of bullying most people may not realise that the victim is being made to feel insecure. Some examples of cyber bullying include hacking personal information, sending hateful or threatening messages, and pressuring people into doing something that they do not want to partake in. Among 14 to 16-year-olds, reported cyber bullying has doubled in the last year from 18% to 36%. However, teenagers between 17 to 19 have experienced the highest prevalence of online bullying with a whopping 43%.

Cyber stalking is when someone stalks your locations and other personal information through your social media accounts. This can be done over the snapchat map and locations on Instagram posts. Therefore you should always make sure your locations are turned off in the options menu. Cyber stalking can also take form in account hacking or identity theft. You can avoid both by not putting any personal details online and having unique passwords for separate accounts. Stalking over the internet can make the victims feel insecure in every location they visit, as they are not aware who could be watching and when they could decide to make themselves known. One study conducted by the Australian Government has indicated that 5% of people overall are cyber stalked. It was also found that it was more likely to be a victim of cyber stalking in younger years, with age 6 being the highest for females and 9 for males.

Peer pressure is most commonly spoken about as something that happens at a party of when you’re out with a group of friends. It is when you are pressured into doing something you are not comfortable with in fear of not conforming with the “it” group. This definition also applies to online encounters where people may be blackmailing or guilt-tripping their victims to do things they don’t want to. The biggest example of this is sexting. Statistics say that 15% of teenagers have sent a sext, while 27% have received one, and 12% have forwarded a sext without permission. A study conducted in January found that two-thirds of teenage girls are being asked, or coerced into, sending sexually explicit messages or images via text.
The biggest problem I find with the internet is the ability to hide your identity. It is scary that people can create anonymous accounts to commit terrible acts and not be held accountable for their actions. This goes hand in hand with cyber bullying, cyber stalking and peer pressure. The modern internet makes it so easy to make someone’s life hell and I believe more people need to be aware that none of it is okay. If you are a victim, know a victim, or think you may be a bully you can call kids helpline on 1800 55 1800. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Keep it clean and kind Kala Kids!

Popular posts from this blog

social media vs reality

Image
  social media vs reality  Have you ever wondered if what you see on social media is what people are actually doing? me too. The first thing you would do when you wake up in the morning is check your social media, yes? Well did you know that what you may be seeing might not be what people are really doing. One of the biggest current issues with social media is how people portray their life on social media and the possibility that people’s perceptions are warped. 2.1 billion people have social media, that’s a lot! people will often take multiple pictures just to put them through multiple different editing apps only to add a filter but life doesn’t have a filter But the real question is how many people are lying or being deceiving about what they are really doing? Or how it really looks? According to https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com Over 75% lie on social media, so here’s another question what could they possibly be getting
Read more
Image
If you mindlessly scroll through Instagram or Facebook whenever you have free time, you’re not alone. But have you ever wondered how all those images of other people’s bodies could be affecting how you view your own? Social media is an important part of the lives of young people around the world. In Australia, approximately 72% of people actively use social media. In addition, young female users browse social media for around 2 hours every day. The most popular social media sites for young people are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube which are mostly image-related. There has been talk for years about mainstream media affecting the body image of millions around the world but now with the new access of social media reaching a wider audience it has become a more serious issue. There are benefits of social media such as increasing voter participation and facilitating political change, reducing social isolation, quick distribution of public health and safet
Read more

Negative Impacts of social media (self esteem).

Image
Social media can have negative effects on your life and you may not even know about it. I will be talking about how social media can damage your self esteem by simply comparing yourself to others on posts you see on a daily basis in your feed. Studies show that currently there is a larger amount of people who suffer from self esteem issues and metal health issues then from in the past. There are also studies to prove that social media can be contributing to that in a study done by Dr Jennifer Rhodes working for Huffposts. There are other opinions on the matter like comparing yourself to others can be a good thing because it can inspire you to try and be just like successful people. I personally think it can sometimes be a good thing but when you do it all the time such as when your scrolling though a social media feed and doing it post after post that's when I think it starts to become a very bad thing. I think you should try not to do it and just focus on what you want t
Read more