SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE A REASON FOR GROWING DEPRESSION IN PEOPLE
No doubt that social media has become a part of life now but do you know this part of your life can risk your life and healthy living. Social media is a good way to entertain ourselves. It relaxes our mind. We enjoy using different social sites and yes, it’s helpful to an extent too. Like we a coin has two sides you cannot know which side is good for you and it’s not always possible that both sides are in your favor. Similarly, with social media too it can be entertaining and interesting but it can be equally harmful if we exceed its usage more than two hours. It can give you some really serious mental health issues like depression. This statement is even proved by scientists after continuous research and they are warning everyone to not use social media for more than two hours.
In a research the scientists found that the young adults who spent more than five hours per day using social media were 2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months, compared to participants who used social networks for less than two hours per day. This study made them reach the conclusion that social media was only the reason for their mental health issues. Daily use of sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter could have an impact on mental health. In fact, research from the US suggests a link between the time spent on social networks and increased risk of depression.
This isn’t the first time that scientists have investigated time spent on social media — especially among younger users — and depression. However, previous studies didn’t establish whether depression was responsible for increased time spent on social media, or whether social media was the cause of depression symptoms.
Several factors could explain the findings. First, the researchers suggest that spending too much time on social media might displace time that could be spent forming more important in-person relationships, achieving personal or professional goals, or just having valuable moments of personal reflection. They also highlight the fact, as evoked in previous studies, that social media is skewed towards showing the positive aspects of people’s lives, and that this kind of social comparison can affect self-esteem. During COVID-19 situation, now that it’s harder to connect socially in person, we’re all using more technology like social media. While we think those technologies certainly can be valuable, we would also encourage people to reflect on which tech experiences are truly useful for them and which ones leave them feeling empty.
Like every other thing in the world social media too has disadvantages when used for more than two hours. Like we say excessive of anything is bad similarly limitless use of social media for more than 2 hours can harm a person mentally. So, we should keep checking our usage of social media because entertainment of a few hours can give us some major health issues. Social media can be part of our lives but it should not be more than our lives. Scientists after a series of research and studies found out this factor so it should be a growing concern among people. Specially teenagers of today spend their many hours on phone, digital gadgets scrolling social media so parents and elders need to engage their kids in something productive rather than giving them expensive gadgets to create issues in their health.
Despite the popularity of social media platforms and the rapidity with which they’ve inserted themselves into nearly all facets of our lives, there’s a remarkable lack of clear data about how they affect us personally: our behaviors, our social relationships, and our mental health.
Written By : Aadya Rani