Children's Mental Health Week

Does social media have a negative or positive impact on  children’s mental health? Be specific and cite examples in your response.

Yes, as a teen growing up with social media, I can say that for the most part, social media's impact on children can be negative, because of the way the media portrays what a "perfect" human being should look, talk, and act like. From celebrities, and magezines showing what "beautiful" is, to what the standards are. So how do they think I would feel? When virtually all of these standards are impossible to reach? And how many models do you see that are diverse? Not just the typical Caucasian, blonde hair and blue eyes, perfect body and hair. The media is in its baby steps for trying to make everything we see diverse. And on Instagram we see girls in Malibu with "prefect" beach bodies, and lifestyles. And it's the same for guys too. The pressure's there for both genders. They're also bombarded with what the "perfect" man should be, masculine, tall, built, god-like features, etc. Both girls and guys of this generation are spoon-fed what they need to be, instead of being told to be happy with themselves. But times change. During the 1800 to early 2000s women who were thin were desired, so the women who were of larger built were what's known as today as "fat shamed". But in present day, women who are curvy, are more appreciated way more than women who aren't. Its shown in hip hop and rap, and in magezines. Songs like All About That Bass by Megan Trainer, and Anaconda by Sir Mixalot show more favour for women of a certain body type. But now who's left out? The women who are not as curvy! So when one is appreciated, the other is shamed? There really is no song that says all women can be proud of what they look like, no matter what type of body they have, and when their is, I'll be the first to buy it!

All of this pressure to look a certain way, can cause so many things, like depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia, and self harm. Girls who want to be desperately thin will stop at nothing to be "perfect", and that leads to anorexia, which leads to anxiety and depression, and if what she wants is unreachable  (in which it almost is) they turn to the only way out of this box with closing walls, self harm which eventually turns to suicide. There have been multiple cases of this, and it could have been prevented, if the media had just been a little more realistic.

I guess in some cases though,  there can be some positive things in the media. For example, Donyale Luna, the first ever female of African Decent, to be on the cover of Vogue, or Andreja Pejic, the first ever transgender model, these are just a few examples from the handful of times the media has shown diversity and acceptance. Even though social media can cause some issues, we still do need it in our day to day life. It connects people, old friends, celebs to  their fans, and even distant relatives. Social media is not the problem, more specifically MEDIA itself. Media stigmatizes and stereotypes, and then social media just portrays the issue. It's more so the messenger than the villain.

In the long run, the media hasn't been very positive with children's Mental health, but with every dark side, there must be some light at the end of the tunnel, like I had said before, the media is just taking baby steps to try and make it a more positive space for teens like me.