Vanessa's Blog
10/17/23
"Instagram is adult entertainment" highlights the issues of mental health on teens caused by social media. Intagram is reported to impacted about 22 million teens. He goes on to say how it's not surprising when keeping up with the trends during the social media era. This is when point of views begin to split. Some people give big social media companies the benefit of the doubt. The people who disagree that social media causes mental health issues believe that the cause doesn't correlate to effect. They believe that teens who are unhappy are more likely to join social media. The other point of view agrees with Ross Douthat. They believe that social media only cares about numbers that is why they are inclined to designing there websites to not care about mental health.
I agree with Ross Douthat pov more than people who are skeptical. I think there is enough evidence that social media impacts the mental health of teens.I think social media doesn't do a good job at censoring things that can hurt teens. The article talks about how teen girls body image are negative due to how social media potrays the perfect body. I agree I think social media boost certain people more than others and its usual someone who meets the beauty standard. This will impact teens health becuase it sets a certain expectation on how to look. This can lead to an infinite amount of other thoughts.
Although I agree with his pov of social media I dont think his prescription on how to fix this issue would do anyhting effective. I think it is to far gone down a specfic path to change how social media is viewed. I think social media wouldn't be view as a thing strictly for adults. I think teens are the future thats why social media targets teens. Teens will be the ones using social media for a longer period of time because they grew up with it. Compared to adults who grew up with it at an older age and had the exposure at a slower rate. I think the most effective way is to educate teens on a health relationship with social media.