The Effects of Social Media on Teens

Do you remember the days when social media did not exist? The time as a teenager when you called your friends and talked for hours, or rode your bike to their houses to tell them all the latest gossip, or to make arrangements to hang out?

As an adult, you chatted with your friends over the phone or met them in person. For your long-distance friendships, you wrote letters and, later, emails.

Social media has changed the way we communicate with each other. With the swipe of a finger, we can learn about a friend from high school thirty years later. As mature and responsible adults, we know how to spend our time on our phones. We don’t believe everything we read, and for the most part, we scroll past posts we disagree with.

Teenagers today have an almost endless supply of social media platforms to choose from and often host profiles on a few. Their role models not only include the predictable celebrities, sports players, and actors but also various influencers, whose job is to get us to buy a product or behave or think differently about a topic.

But what are the effects of social media on teens? Should we be worried?

The Benefits of Social Media

Before discussing social media’s negative effects, we should point out the benefits. Communication has never been more accessible than now. Your teen can chat with their older sibling stationed in another country on FaceTime or learn about class changes from their school’s Facebook page. They can keep up with the football game schedule on X or get ideas about prom from posts on Instagram.

Teens can also scan college QR codes and learn more about their chosen fields through the universities’ pages. If they are looking for motivation for a career, workout, or fashion, social media provides the answers at their fingertips. Within seconds, they can discover what they want to know and connect with friends and family worldwide.

The Effects of Social Media on Teens

The above benefits lead to positive effects of social media on teens. They learn to research and find answers for themselves. They learn to advocate for themselves and others. They learn empathy and can become more involved in issues that matter to them.

There are also negative effects of social media on teens. The truth is that most social platforms require a child to be thirteen to access the account, but many children and parents create accounts for them with fake birthdays to join their friends. This may seem harmless, but as a parent, you are showing your child that you will bend your morals and integrity for something as small as allowing them a social media account at a younger-than-recommended age.

Children are bombarded with comparisons, and social media strengthens these attacks. They will compare their bodies, appearance, and clothes to young adults on the Internet who use specialized lighting and filters. This is also the prime time for teens to develop eating disorders or experience bullying. They expose themselves to a world much larger than their school or hometown, a world where predators wait.

All this can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, and, in severe cases, suicide. Excessive social media usage and internet use in general can lead to sleep problems and memory issues. If your teen is having problems focusing on homework, it might not be the work so much as their ability to concentrate.

When a teen scrolls through social media and receives likes and positive comments about their posts, the reward part of their brain lights up with a surge of dopamine. Unfortunately, this can overstimulate a teenager’s brain with the type of stimulation you might see in someone with addiction.

Christian Counseling for Teens in Allen, Texas

The effects of social media on teens are concerning to parents and guardians. If your child can be influenced to do something they should not, take dangerous risks, water down their faith to fit in with a demographic, or face cyberbullying, eventually, they will feel the adverse effects.

Monitoring social media accounts helps teach your child the dangers of befriending strangers or taking to heart what someone says on the Internet. But sometimes, the wounds are already cut, or an addiction has developed.

Contact our office today at Texas Christian Counseling, Allen to schedule an appointment with a Christian counselor in Allen, Texas who specializes in the effects of social media on teens. We can help break the cycle and reintroduce your child to the world outside Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and X.