The wave of the change in information and communication technology in the last few years has impacted severely on way of living. Now socializing means connecting on social media. Social media applications have also increased their features in past few years, previously applications were simple and had a sole purpose. With the more advancement in applications, time spent on them has also increased.
Everyone, especially the youth, is always busy on their phones. Likes and follows on social media are becoming a source of satisfying ego. People are spending too much time on social media applications and have no time to enjoy nature. As W.H Davis in his poem “Leisure” said :
“We have no time to stand and stare”
Aman says according to a recent research average screen time of teenagers is more than 7 hours. It simply means that a major part of the day is spent on looking at the phone. Its direct impact on mental well beings of youth and their mental capabilities/IQ are also decreasing.
Undoubtedly, there are a number of benefits of Social media applications but spending too much time on social media is affecting mental health like a slow poison. Mindlessly scrolling and watching small video clips are becoming a trend. This trend has a treacherous cycle ahead, that starts from laziness and ends in severe depression. Social media is vanishing distances but also creating a never-ending race of false pretense. One of major harm of social media is that people are getting into inferiority complex by seeing dazzle of others and it has terrible psychological effects.
Ironically, social media was invented to make people friendlier but in actual people have been turned away instead of brought closer. Happiness and smiles are becoming as rare as dinosaurs. A study discovered that happiness is inversely proportional to more use of Facebook. It has been observed that social media is becoming a force that tends towards social isolation. Naturally, human beings are social animals and there are certain hormones that develop by meeting people. So, lack of actual-social meetings is also affecting mental health adversely.
Aman Brar says one of main reason of mood swings is also social media, as looking other stories and lucrative lifestyles could cause these problems. If we go back in 80s, depression and anxiety were considered as rare problem but now a days with hi-tech innovations, every third person has faced certain kind of depression. There are number of reported cases that people specially teenagers committed suicides due to severe depression and after discovering deep, social media was considered as root cause.
Many psychologists are warning again and again that this is the time to change our attitudes towards social media and limit our usage time on such applications. If we would have not minimized our use of social media, then a wave of new mental issues/illnesses will grasp human beings.
“Change the change, if you will not change the change, the change will change you”