I recall a time when I was too immersed in social media. This was when I was a pre-teen through my early teenage years and I was very closely tied to my online drawing community on this semi-small art community app on my iPad. I loved art, so combining drawing what I loved with being able to interact with my friends and discover new ones was fun for me. However, I experienced a lot of negative effects alongside the positives that I couldn’t understand was harming me as I was really just a child growing and trying to figure things out in life. I experienced some bullying by some users who were attacking me because they thought I said something insensitive when I really wasn’t. They created hateful art and comments targeting me and during this time, it really tore me apart and made me feel very hurt. Another issue I ran into were strangers who were acting creepy and trying to get my personal information, which was scary to see that it wasn’t a rare occurrence.
Looking back at this, I wish that my parents had more surveillance over my social media networks such as this one, even if I wouldn’t have liked it during the time. I was just at such a vulnerable, growing age, and I was exposed to a lot of damaging interactions. More so, I wished that I was on a more mainstream app because this app was made by a small developer/group of people, so when users and content were reported it was not dealt with as quickly or properly as I wished. What I experienced preyed on my feelings of isolation. I felt too locked-in this social network and it made my already-present isolated feelings and depression worsen, as noted in the Medical News Today article. It definitely made it harder for me to get better. As time went on, I found myself more connected with reality and able to get better the less I used this app and the more I found healthy connections to people in real life. As this article also notes, I did find improvement in my issues when I formed healthier connections through social media. The Business Insider article makes a further point that helps explain how easily people can become offended and attack others; just from a misunderstanding of words: “Non-verbal communication, after all, (argued by some to represent up to 40% of our in-person communication) is completely absent. Be careful how you word every electronic message you send, in whatever context” (Greenwood 2019).
I believe ways to protect the feeling of isolation is making all social media apps, even small ones like the one I used, have a function to make your account private so that you can let who you want to see your posts and interact with you to prevent bullying/hate comments. Having an app like this have time limits or screen time reminders would help encourage users to consider going off the app and forming strong connections with the real world too. There should be required guidelines for all social media apps, big or small, to have a certain strong level of security and responses to reported content, as well as all having time limits or screen time restrictions depending on the ages of the users. These measures should be implemented nationally or state-wide, so that all social media apps have to adhere to them and these regulations would promote a safer environment for people, especially young kids, so they can grow up healthily and not be in potential danger. Like there are nutrition regulations and regulations in healthcare practices, there should be regulations all agreed upon for social media networks.
Articles used: The Negative Effects of Tech and Some Ways Tech isMaking Humanity Worse
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