Does using social media make youth lonely?
Media makes us unhappy so often. Because it influences human natural desires. We cannot control it directly and it, in turn, makes us upset. Neuroscientists started searching why we do not feel satisfied when we have the freedom to discover about others.
Studies show social media can make the lower-class unhappy and the upper class happy. This is because social media makes other people’s lives seem more successful and glamorous than yours. When elites and upper-class individuals feel they have more than others who don’t have satisfaction. Furthermore, in these studies, some groups who use social media are often lonelier than average social media users. (Article no.4) Social status as well as where you live and use social media can impact your perception of loneliness. In Europe, Eastern European youths are the loneliest, whereas Northern Europeans are said to feel less lonely in comparison There is also a relatively high percentage in Southern European countries such as Italy, Greece, and Portugal. (The Philosophy of Loneliness p.15) The Scandinavian countries distinguish (themselves) social media users with a relatively low prevalence of loneliness compared to other European countries, and with relatively little variation in prevalence among different social groups in youth.
The United Nations defines “youth” as those who are between the ages of 14 to 24. Using social media websites is the most common activity of today’s young generation. Any website, company, or institution uses social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Line, etc. Such websites offer today’s youth a portal for entertainment and communication. According to the research, 54% of youth use social media daily. In the United States, 90% of young adults use one of the social media at least once per day.
New technologies are becoming popular day by day and it is difficult to monitor their usage. For young adults, following social media is something done every day without hesitation. It is a part of life now. Somehow we can say that they cannot live, talk, write, research, or go somewhere without a smartphone. There are many advantages to this daily usage of social media. When you click on one bottom you can see the other part of world news by using your mobile phone. If you want, you can work and buy anything you need thanks to online shopping. Paying your bills, learning new languages, working online, and so on. Today these things are easy. However, humans are still slower than machines. Why do we need to wait in the bank all day? Just use ATM machines wherever you find them.
These new technologies make us rethink our daily activities. Because if we save our time so easily, we do not have to go outside. In Japan, over 500,000 people, who define themselves as anti-socials, work and study from home. Most of them live in isolation and they are older people. Isolated people have the option of having online relationships and friendships that they might not have had otherwise. The case has the first meeting smartphones and other technologies compared to the young generation very late. But, half a million people cannot communicate with people face to face. In some developed countries, such as Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, people have problems making friends in society. For these people, expressing themselves can be difficult because there was no Facebook emojis and stickers during face to face conversations. It was an interesting part of my small research. Prior to this research, I was not aware of the idea that older people are lonelier than youth because of social media. However, the old generation criticizes it more often than youth do, even though the number of statistics shows that middle-aged people who are addicted to social media are more than youth addicted.
Some experts call the very young generation “digital natives” meaning those who grow up with smartphones, apps, and computers. Today, digital natives and the younger generation can use technology very well. They already adopted it but they also are addicted to it. The study shows, someone who spends more than 2 hours can have a feeling that they are lonely.
There are many adverse effects of social media on youth. One of the most popular adverse effects is texting to each other (especially with strangers). People think most parents and students should work 40 hours per week and study more than 40 hours to make people lonely and isolated than in the past. Most people also blame social media because it has generated more loneliness in the 21st century by displaying sociability. However, research shows human loneliness exists everywhere, even though there is no internet connection. It is not only about social media, but also the nature of human beings.
Unconsciously people want to share their feelings with others. Experts argue that those who spend more than 2 hours online per day might be facing loneliness and depression. (Article no.4) It is a natural human phenomenon which means we do not need to really count as a disease.
In previous neuroscience work, they showed that the brain development of digital natives who never remember when they started using the technology and never struggled with using the social network are tools of communication for them. Decades ago, some neuroscientists argued that social media makes people lonely and immature. However, looking back through history, they could see different results. Social media can be replacing live communication or loneliness. However, it doesn’t make people happy for a long time. Also, social media can help one communicate with multiple people at the same time. Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge have worked on multiple experiments which are related to suicide in youth. In one study, the young generation choose social media because they have experienced loneliness. Most people blame social media for loneliness. But, daily communication, in reality, can make people more confident. Loneliness basically belongs more to the cognitive rather than to the physical end of the emotion continuum, but we also find loneliness, a social pain. Indeed, there is a startling connection between social and physical pain. Studies have also explored whether medicine that is normally meant for physical pain can also be used to reduce social pain, and the answer is that it actually can. Of course, that does not mean that an aspirin a day will cure the problem of social media loneliness.
Social media and social networks have brought us many benefits for improving our knowledge and communication. It has helped the development of democracy, tourism, business, and online education. Unfortunately, it has increased the number of lonely people in society. Why I emphasize it so often is related to how lonely individuals interpret their social surroundings as threatening to a greater extent than non-lonely individuals. They also regard social situations as being risk-filled to a greater degree than non-lonely individuals, and that causes them to enter social situations differently, which in turn proves an obstacle to forming the attachments they so desire. Fear prevents the very thing that could make their loneliness subside: human contact.
In the late 1990s, people started communicating with each other through the internet and text messages. Many movies showed romantic relationships on TV. Our young generation grew up with these concepts of meeting strangers on the internet randomly. It was attractive in the beginning. Decades later, technology introduced us to many new mental illness and social loneliness. For teenagers, life dramatically changed when they were presented with an opportunity of cyber life apart from their real life. They seem to believe that the predominant cyber lifestyle makes them happy and feel safe.
Youths who do not use social media often have a higher rate of trust in each other. Social media has the potential to spread fake information that makes youth nervous. (The Philosophy of Loneliness p.105)
Social media has disadvantages and my research aims to highlight many of these aspects along with some psychological context of social media and what kind of role it played in shaping today’s youth society.
The thing is we need to figure out how to solve the problem of loneliness in our society, not changing social media. Because social media can help disability groups to communicate with other people. But we should have forgotten about the loneliness of youth loneliness. As a young person, sharing your thoughts and ideas for democracy online is very helpful.
We need more studies to solve it. A meta-study of 148 studies examining the relationship between loneliness and social media showed that it is strongly related to each other. Youth should use it less and make friends in daily life like in the past decades. Social media cannot replace real human communication. How can we make them satisfied in daily life without technology? It sounds almost impossible. However, the most important thing is how we can make people, especially our youth, happy by using social networks.
Reference:
1. Clinic Report- The Impact of Social Media on children, adolescents, and Families
Year: March 28, 2011
Pages: 7
Link: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/127/4/800.full.pdf
The first article outlines how social media has influenced the younger generation and what are the benefits and certain risks of young people using social media. The paper aims to give a better understanding to parents about what their kids are going through when constantly engaging on social media from a young age. There are many benefits that social media brings which include enhanced learning opportunities, community engagement, socialization. However social media brings about risks of social media too. These include online bullying and harassment, sexting, Facebook depression, and privacy concerns.
2. “A philosophy of Loneliness” by Lars Svendsen
Year: This book is published in 2015 by Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
First published in English 2017
Pages: 138
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31573708-a-philosophy-of-loneliness
The book has a total of 8 chapters. I read the whole book and it brings me knowledge and wisdom about loneliness. The book explains what we believe in social life about loneliness is not 100% true. Before I read this book, what I was thinking about loneliness was changed a lot. For example, the loneliness epidemic is not because of the development of social media or social networking webs. It existed in the world from the beginning till now. Svendsen highlights loneliness is not directly related to social networking. It has many reasons and if you feel the sort of loneliness (chronic loneliness or short term) it can be a natural emotion in human life. Somehow we need to feel lonely and it is a very natural emotion. If you do not feel lonely that makes a problem that affects your mentality. On the other hand, chronic loneliness affects your blood pressure and the immune system. It can increase your stress hormones in your body. Human beings cannot diagnose the loneliness crisis because it is not a psychiatric diagnosis. But, in social media, loneliness is also represented as a public disease or a public health problem. By using this book, I only wanted to learn about loneliness and what makes us really lonely.
3. “Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.”
Link:https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(17)30016-8/fulltext
Year: 2015
Pages: 9
The article is about isolation among American youths. How social media platforms are used in the USA and offer an opportunity to solve social isolation. The study shows associations between social media use and PSI among U.S young adults.
4. Association between Social Media Use and Depression among U.S. Young Adults
Year: 2016
Link:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853817/
The article explains how social networks can make U.S youth depressed nowadays. And it shows the youth phenomenon of social media.
5. Media use and brain development during adolescence
Year: 2018
