Depression and Social Media
Depression is on of the greatest metal health illness now a days in America. The increasing problem has been alerting professionals of several areas specially because of the rising rates of suicide over the last decade.
From mids of 2017 to last year, more than 11% of teens, and almost 10% of Americans between their 18 and 25, developed major depression. More than 22% of American girls in high school think about attempting suicide, according to a CDC 2013 research, and around 40% of teenagers and college students have already engaged in some sord of self-hurting behavior such as cutting or burning themselves. Not coincidentally, this alarming data matches with the increasing presence of smartphones and social media in the mentioned groups.
Kids began to get smartphones between 2010 and 2015. And according to the psychologist Jean Twenge, phD, as the phones spread, overall depression synthons increased year by year. Everything starts with the need of belonging, being part of something. The prior need of every human being is to connect. Social media has the power to give its users the illusion that they're connecting to other people even though they're not close to them, and sometimes doesn't even know them. However what it's shown there (on social media) is not reality. Usually people don't post their bad moments, only their 'ups', never their 'downs'. This creates a void on someone that is already likely to feel somehow inferior, and increses his or her feeling of not belonging. That and the consequent fewer hours of sleep (also one of the main problems caused by the use of smartphones) are two major causes of the great increase of depression.
A general awareness of the whole nation is necessary to start working towards the solving of this problem! Both young people who are the ones most struck by this issue to be more alert, and parents to start observing and taking precaution since early ages of their children.
