By Nona Stewart
Multimedia Editor
Have you noticed that if you do not have your phone, or you do not have service you start to stress out? This is because you may have been conditioned to need the immediate gratification that social media provides by a like, follow or mindless scrolling. The world today is majorly run by social media and it is not a terrible thing; however, it does leave a lot of people with some concerns about what kind of effect this can have on communication and most of all mental health.
Studies have been done by Sarah West, Rachel Puszcynski and Tanya Cohn, which show that with time social media and a lot of screen time can increase the chances of having anxiety and severe depressive episodes. Sadly, this does not apply just to adults. The same study states that 1 in 10 children suffer from anxiety and depression before the age of 13 due to high use of screen time in early development.
These children grow up to have a challenging time as adults and workers. When mental health disorders do not get the treatment they need to be successful they tend to develop worse conditions like Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). SAD impacts the decisions people make all through their life including what kind of job they get.
According to the same study, women will choose jobs in which they do not have to speak to lot of people and tend to pick jobs in which they can be a background character rather than a job where they are actively talking to and interacting with people. Those background jobs are especially important; however, a lot of people with SAD had dreams of doing something bigger than the job they must choose because they cannot handle the job they dreamed of doing.
Social media is a helpful tool in communication but in moderation. You should control how much and you the people around you are using it as it can create a lot of problems in their future.
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