Molly, a 14-year-old girl, died by suicide in November 2017. On a screen in the courtroom were suicide, self-harm, and depressive videos and images that she had viewed before she suicide.“Molly Rose Russell died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content,” said the coroner, Andrew Walker. Rather than officially classifying her death as suicide, he stated that “the internet negatively affected her mental health and contributed to her death in a more than minimal way.”  Molly, in this case, is only one of the teenaged-victims of social media. Unfortunately, social media is harming a lot more teenagers deeply, leading to severe consequences out of control.

Social media are online platforms that enable people to connect with others by posting and viewing images or videos in public, which reached an exciting phase of development in 1995 through advancements in technology. The development could be traced back to Tom Anderson’s MySpace in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook in 2004, Jack Dorsey’s Twitter in 2006, and Allen Zhang’s WeChat in 2011. It is estimated that there are a total of 4.74 billion social media users nowadays all around the world. People want their online relationships to encompass more than communication between friends, resulting in the combination of social media and online networks, such as YouTube and Instagram, which allow users to create communities of subscribers for sharing. As the competition for users’ time and attention heated up, all of these sites are trying to anticipate users’ changing tastes to attract users to spend more time on them. However, social media platforms nowadays are deviated from their original intention of entertainment and communication by harming the development of teenagers. It is estimated that the average screen time of U.S. teens on social media is more than seven hours, using three different forms of social media daily. While social media sometimes could make teens relax and gain valuable information, it has left teens with both physical and mental harm.

Spending a lot of time on social media is harming teenagers’ body health continuously. One-third of the students in a study conducted by the Benesse Institute of Education claimed that social media interfered with their normal daily routines by abbreviating their sleep time, which decrease their energy. This sleep deprivation negatively impacts teenagers' moods, abilities to regulate emotions and relationships. This is a vicious cycle since lack of sleep can cause stress, and this stress can furthermore promote insomnia. Additionally, long periods spent sitting and going through social media result in a loss of exercise, which degrades teenagers’ immune systems, causing a higher chance of developing carpal tunnel syndrome, and eye or back strain. These maladies are most pernicious to teenagers since they are still developing their bodies. 

Moreover, a platform that displays short videos, such as TikTok or YouTube, is a new form of social media that attracted much attention, playing a role in damaging teens’ brains indirectly. “The brain works on a use it or loses it principle,” psychologist Dodgen-Magee says. “...the portions of the brain that regulate these functions have the potential to show less robust, and possibly even diminished, function”. Since teenagers normally spend a large amount of time watching entertaining videos that do not require any functioning of their brains, they have less time to actively engage their brains into functioning. Consequently, short videos diminish a teenager’s ability to actively use he or she’s brain and cause bluntness among the brain, which will potentially harm his or her entire life. Moreover, according to Michael Manos “If kids’ brains become accustomed to constant changes, the brain finds it difficult to adapt to a non-digital activity where things don’t move quite as fast”. Teens typically struggle more than adults would with directed attention, meaning blocking out interferences and being focused for a long time to accomplish something such as reading books. Now, short videos even worsen their directed attention by increasing the number of information teens get in touch with daily while they are still studying at school. People’s attention spans and brain storages shorten and can even get damaged when there is an excess amount of information, and short videos exactly fit in the criteria of "overloading our brains with information" because it's so simple to swipe through tens, if not hundreds, of TikTok videos in a matter of moments. 

The impact of social media on teens’ mental health is even more severe. Social media causes addictions that are due to sudden dopamine deprivation upward, resulting in dopamine deficiency afterwards, pushing people to spend even more time to compensate. For instance, a video game addict may enjoy a certain game to the fullest, but soon he will need to play another game that is even more demanding, violent, and interactive to experience that same level of delight. This addictive behavior interferes with teenagers' daily events by taking away their time to spend on beneficial and important things, such as studying and exercising. Furthermore, agitation, depression, anger, and anxiety could all be symptoms of withdrawal when teenagers are not using social media. These psychological symptoms may also manifest as physical signs such as shortness of breath, raising heart rates, and tensed shoulders, creating a negative cycle that deeply harms teens.

Moreover, social media also causes low self-esteem. Many girls nowadays are inundated with their peers posting the most perfect pictures of themselves, or they're following celebrities who post photos extensively with professional makeup and hair teams. These trigger teenagers to make comparisons with them and potentially leading to lower self-esteem. The more eager and the longer time   teens spend on social media, the less time they would have to spend on other valuable activities that could establish their confidence. Low self-esteem can also be caused by cyberbullying, but it is not the only consequence that cyberbullying on social media triggers.[ZJ6]  That is to say, more than 500,000 US teenagers in grades 8 through 12 were included in a 2017 study that examined a correlation between the rise in depressed symptoms and social media adoption. They discovered a 33% increase in the number of teenagers with severe depressive mental symptoms between 2010 and 2015, and a 31% increase in suicide. It is easiest to bully others online instead of in person because the “criminals” could simply say that they are just joking in order to cover what they truly did, which happens the most among teenagers. Cyberbullying can lead to mental health problems including increased stress and anxiety, depression, violent outbursts, low self-esteem, and also poor academical performances, or even suicide. Even when the bullying has stopped, cyberbullying can leave victims with lifelong emotional damages.

On the other hand, some argues that social media could also be beneficial by bringing valuable information and support to teens. That is to say, many teens who are going through difficulties seek support on social media by turning to group chats of their friends for help, or searching for assistance from complete strangers online in places like Reddit's r/Anxiety, which usually has more than 1,000 users active at any given time. Teens can get in touch with people who share their opinions and are willing to help them online, making them receive valuable information and support without concerning about geographical boundaries. However, not all the information online is accountable, and that teens might get in touch with harmful subjects, including fake, inaccurate and inappropriate information on social media. Individuals' engagement with fake news sources increased a lot between 2019 and 2020, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. Fake and inaccurate propaganda was spreading drastically on these events, creating misinformation. The misinformation, whether it’s created in purpose or not, are especially harmful among gullible teens since they may not have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, resulting in them believing in false information. Moreover, some profiles on social media were exposed to graphic self-harm pictures as well as inappropriate images and contents of razors, pornography, suicide, drug abuse, and so on. There are rules and safeguards in places offline to keep teens away from these inappropriate things, but they, unfortunately, do not exist in the online world.

In summary, social media is harming the development of teenagers both physically and mentally in many ways. “I call on all with influence to prioritize youth in development plans...By empowering today’s youth, we will lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future for generations to come.” claimed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Teenagers represent a vital transitional stage between childhood and maturity since they are characterized by significant physical, psychological, and social growth. The growth and health of society's future youth are all significantly impacted by this teen development state. Now, the creation of social media is harming the development of teens, who are still building the foundations for the rest of their lives. As a result, shouldn’t people reconsider and fix the accountability of social media for the virtue of the development of future young generations?