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Former Social Media Addict Suggests It’s Destroying Young Lives

Former Social Media Addict Suggests It’s Destroying Young Lives

“As I looked around me, it was obvious that the most plugged in of my friends were consistently the most anxious and insecure.”

While social media has allowed young people to connect with each other in new ways, it has brought with it a whole new set of pressures and problems.

A young woman named Rikki Schlott writes at the New York Post:

Gen Z former social media addict knows Instagram destroys young lives

At age 11, I opened up an Instagram account. All my friends were there, so why not?

It started out innocently enough as I shared photos of sunsets and my dogs with a couple dozen followers. But, as Instagram became more ubiquitous and adolescence set in, my experience morphed into something altogether different. I would lay in bed nightly, illuminated by the blue glow of my iPhone, just scrolling. The minutes — sometimes hours — would disappear as I browsed the highlight reels of everybody else’s lives. I began to idolize perfectly proportioned influencers, holding my developing frame up to photoshopped ideals. My likes and my follower count became demented metrics of self-worth. Like any teen girl, I had my insecurities and Instagram seemed only to exacerbate them.

As I looked around me, it was obvious that the most plugged in of my friends were consistently the most anxious and insecure. It soon became clear to me that Instagram was not a force for good, so in high school I resolved to reclaim my youth by limiting my time on social media.

Because I’ve experienced firsthand the toxic mixture of social media and adolescent angst, I was horrified by a recent Wall Street Journal exposé that revealed Facebook, which owns Instagram, knows its platforms are damaging to teenage mental health. Posted to the company’s internal message boards were damning statistics like “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression” and “we make body image worse for one in three teen girls.”

Read the whole thing.

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Comments

Wow. It’s almost like parents have a responsibility to limit their children’s access to the wider world around them until they have the maturity to understand and cope with it.

“Amidst a youth epidemic of depression, self-harm and suicide, there clearly is a moral imperative to stop the damaging trajectory of technology. But Big Tech has absolved itself of any responsibility.

Therefore, we must resolve to take matters into our own hands. “

Yeah, maybe your parents could have done their bloody jobs there, sunshine.

If one took the book Alcoholics Anonymous and replaced “alcohol” with any of the names of the social media sites, pretty much every word would still apply. The only thing which has changed is the substance du jour.

“I started to drink to be social, and ended up drinking by myself.” Seems to be a common theme with today’s youth The more “connected” that they think they are, the less they are in reality. I don’t have internet at home for a reason, because isolation is a “bad thing.”

Years ago a comedian made the observation that if you want to feel ugly, read a beauty magazine. A one stop place to both feel ugly, and yet, find a solution via an advertised product, to make you whole again. If you want a primer on advertising, look at any of Bill Hick’s rants. He was Carlin on Steroids when it came to marketing.