The Impact Of Instagram On Mental Health And Body Image
Mental health, as each day goes by, is getting more important than in the past. One of the reasons for this is the growing rate of people suffering from mental health issues and seeking professional help.
In the past, the ratio of mental health issues was way smaller than in today’s generation, which as I believe, Social Media plays a big role in.
As the world goes forward, with the internet getting more and more effective day by day and making life easy for so many of us, Social Media and especially Instagram, is taking a huge toll on the mental health of this generation.
Addiction
Being a teenager myself, I’m not at all against Social Media or the use of phones but seeing my friends getting distracted in their studies or even their priorities by the excessive amount of time they’re giving to this app, concerns me.
Instagram as known by most of us, is used for uploading pictures. Oh sorry! Uploading your highly edited as well as filtered pictures that you feel like showing off.
A large number of young faces have taken it off as a means of earning through Instagram by uploading pictures, putting on stories, and getting people to follow them. The more their followers, the more they earn from this app, and undoubtedly, as much as it’s an addiction, it has the same amount of useful features in it but that’s for another article.
Wrong Standards Of Beauty
As I said, so many people have started earning through Instagram but most of the time what they don’t realize is that the young minds following them, looking at their so-called perfect lives are affecting the world more than they think.
A teenage girl looks at your picture and thinks how ugly she is, not realizing just how beautiful she is even without all those filters and all that editing.
A 15-year-old boy sees one of your pictures in your gym and starts to think he’s worth nothing because he doesn’t have a body like you.
The Thousands of Millions of people watching your stories every day think their life is the worst and it should’ve been like yours. Always dressed up, eating the best food, having a beautiful house, flawless skin, and whatnot.
Privacy Issues
Hacking in today’s world is not a difficult task anymore, mainly with all the tools and sources now available on the Internet, hacking has started to be more common. No matter how secure Instagram is or how many passwords you’ve put on the app, hundreds of Instagram accounts are hacked into daily and as expected, these hackers are mostly no other than some desperate people in need of attention.
They bully you through your pictures, spread fake rumors about you and so much more, resulting in the users getting disturbed. Their life gets out of their hand in less than a day and they don’t know how.
Sharing with an elder doesn’t seem like a good option when they’re sure they are going to get grounded instead of being helped, leading to bad mental health and trust issues.
Cyberbullying
Even with countless agencies working to prevent it, cyberbullying is still a pretty common experience among the users of Instagram and is highly expected when you’re an Instagram influencer with a public account.
All types of people comment on your pictures and stories or slide into your DMs with no other purpose than bullying you. Even if there is nothing you did wrong, someone is always going to find something to bully you over and make it as hard for the influencers to continue their work and personal lives as they can.
I firmly believe that Social Media has some serious issues that need to be addressed.
While it can be a great tool for connecting with others and sharing information, there are also many negative aspects to it that can’t be ignored.
From cyberbullying to the spread of misinformation, it’s clear that there are more harmful features than beneficial ones on these platforms. It’s important that we acknowledge these problems and work to make social media a safer and more positive space for everyone.
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