QUOTE OF TRUTH: “THERE’S A SOLUTION. JUST PUT ALL YOUR HEART AND SOUL INTO IT AND WE CAN ALL FIX THE PROBLEMS TOGETHER.” – L.O.A.S.H (A.K.A MEEEEE!)
Yes, there is a solution, always.
Today’s society has the majority of people getting negatively impacted by social media. It isn’t just the youth going through the influence but everyone is victims of the unrealistic expectations social media gives which often leads to disappointment which later on can develop into something more serious.
Phones and devices are normally easy to access along with social media. There’s a tendency to constantly check the news feeds across multiple social media platforms. This often leads to addiction. Due to the lack of guidance and awareness, this addiction, which takes up hours and hours constantly per day, then disrupts the person’s life from school, work, studies, and other productive routines in which life goes haywire.
Aside from the significant amount of time going to social media, studies have shown that it has bad effects on the mental health of people and kids today.
Okay, so it’s out there: in today’s age, social media is used by so many and is also the blame for so many problems. However, in my opinion, the root problem isn’t social media per se. I would infer that the root problems would be cyberbullying, decreased face-to-face interactions with other people, contents by people to influence in a bad way, and (a big contribution goes to) social comparisons. These are the problems we need to properly address not just pointing fingers at social media. We can’t just be like:
“hey, stop using your social media it’s such a distraction. Just like stop using it. yeah?”
No, this route isn’t going to work. We are living in a digital age. Social media is what helps connections and communications for people around the world. It strengthens the professional connections, spread news, allow people to express themselves creatively (with their music, art, skits, photography, and more), aids social movements (Feminist Movements, World Cleanup Day, Black Lives Matter, and so much more), spread awareness, and the list goes on…..
What we should be doing is making those, especially the youth, know their self-worth and to motivate & inspire growth and one’s improvement. Encouraging those to go out and socialize, do some volunteering and helping out in the community. Even to use those social media skills to spread the awareness of the environment and what’s going on around. Another important thing to do is to strengthen the youth’s values and mindset to avoid those negative and bad influences that appear on their screens. If some kind of social media patrol thing could be put out to casually check every now and then the audience and the content displayed to keep it appropriate would be good too. And, since social media is going everywhere a class about cyberbullying and awareness for how to understand its specs should also be implemented.
Those are just a few ideas that could change the course of how people look at social media and to even make it a positive outlet. So, we have to take this system of social media that has been misused, break it, look at the more important problems, and then we can finally go to fixing it. If we really put our minds to fixing a problem, we can do it. This isn’t a lost cause we just need implementation. And, as I said earlier there’s a solution.
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Life of a Secret Homeschooler | A.K.A | L.O.A.S.H 