Having partaken in numerous discussions about the mental health crisis within the past couple years, there are definitely many different factors I have heard that contribute to the widespread problems among students and young adults.  But there are also many recurring topics, with one of the most common ones I have observed being social media.  Something created with the intent to connect people and communities and bring them closer seems to be doing the opposite: dividing and isolating people.  Due to its relatively recent introduction into our lives with the advancement of technology, we are struggling to combat these problems effectively.  It seems to me like it is a rapidly spreading disease- one that we don’t have a vaccine for.

I reached out to students here at UD to hear their perspective on social media, and asked if it has been harmful to their own mental health.  The responses were all over the spectrum ranging from “very harmful” to “not at all”.  The first person I interviewed gave me a response which I expected to be the most common.  He said, when asked if social media has been a problem for his health, “Not a huge one.  It is not an outlier among anything things, but my phone itself has definitely played a large factor.”  Social media is a slight problem for him, but not anything crazy compared to other aspects of life.  The next person I talked to responded with, “Yes, it definitely has caused me to compare myself to other people when I should not have, which has for sure led to further mental problems.”  This, I don’t believe, is anything out of the ordinary either; many people, I am sure, would agree that the constant comparisons unconsciously occurring when on social media do take a toll on you mentally.  However, the next three people I talked to all said that social media is not a problem for them at all.  One student said “I can see how it could cause problems for people, but I can’t say it hurts my mental health at all.”  When asked why he doesn’t think it causes any problems for him, he replied “I guess I just don’t really care what everyone else is doing.”  As easy as he made it sound, I am sure it is a lot harder than that.

It was a nice, genuine surprise for me to hear three out of five people say that social media does not hurt their mental health.  I was expecting maybe one student to respond like that.  Once my initial reaction wore off, I realized how scary that actually is.  I was happy that only 40% of the students reported problems from social media?  With 76 million students enrolled in US schools as of 2018, 40% sure is a lot of people.  Of course, my survey cannot be generalized across all students, as my sample group consisted only of freshman males living in Redding.