How social media can affect people

Social media began forming in the mid-1990s with the development of platforms that supported digital communication like emails, texting, video, and picture-taking.

The rise of social media began with Friendster, MySpace, and LinkedIn around 2003.

During the 2000s, more apps came, like Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube launched in 2005, and Twitter in 2006; later, Instagram launched in 2010 and Snapchat in 2011.

Outside of social media and what we present on social media, we’re all humans living the same 24 hours.

While some people’s lives are different from each other's, they all have the same effect.

Some of us are rich, some of us are poor, and some of us happen to be wealthy, but we all have the same emotions.

Social media can trigger depression and cause self-judgment.

Example: A celebrity post says that they’re now engaged, and a person who is struggling with their significant other sees and wishes they were engaged, so they beat themselves up, which causes self-judgement and depression, which makes them think sadly and angrily in their thoughts.

Social media can also become addictive to the point where you lose touch with your real life and go on Instagram to live a false one.

People often go on social media and create a false perspective of themselves because they’re scared to be themselves around people or because they can’t be themselves around people.

They have an image to keep up with on Instagram, so it becomes addicting to post, and that affects their mental health.

Among the thousands of things people go through in their daily lives, social media adds to that.

The social platforms are no longer kid-friendly; social media adds exposure to content that is not age-appropriate for kids and upcoming teens.

Platforms are now used more for cyberbullying than spreading love and happiness.

According to Cyberbullying.org, 20% of kids cyberbullied think about suicide, and 1 in 10 attempt it.