When I was a kid my sister and I would always go to my grandma’s and hang out with my favorite cousins. I always noticed that my oldest cousin Josie, who was 16 when we would hang out, was always on her phone. Oftentimes she would go into another room and call one of her friends, or just sit on the couch and ignore us when she was frequently typing on her phone. After constantly noticing how she didn't even pay attention to anyone, I always told myself that I would never be like that, and I would always be fun and interact with everyone. That was a lie. Now, I’m fifteen years old and always have my phone right by my side. I have become significantly less social in everyday life and would rather sit in a dark room with my phone than socialize with my family. That’s when I realized that social media is negatively affecting social and communicational skills and ultimately causes kids to be less social. Many kids struggle with face-to-face communication. A huge thing about social media is the unknown, kids may think one thing but social media is the exact opposite. Relationships are a really tough thing to maintain when the threat of social media is continuously being brought up. Finally, always being on social media can lead to unhealthy isolation. 

Social media severely lacks face-to-face communication. According to an article entitled “How Cellphones Affect Communication Skills,” published on June 29th, 2022, written by a professor at Grand Canyon University, we lose important social cues when we text instead of communicating in person. When talking to anybody it is very important to pick up on the minor things they do to be able to understand their emotions. When texting, no facial expressions are shown, so it is very hard to understand if someone is being serious or joking. This often leads to confusion and can end in arguments. A lot of times people joke around but then a friend doesn’t understand we’re joking because they can't see our face or hear the tone of voice, they can take what we said the wrong way. Although we lose our sense of emotion when talking over the phone we do often gain confidence. Many people decide to put things out on social media that they would never say to someone else’s face. As soon as they are confronted about these things they break down. When we’re texting we have however much time we need to think of a response, but in person, we have to speak straight away. Frequently texting makes our confrontation skills decrease because we don't understand the emotion and impact behind our words until it comes back to bite, and then we don't know how to respond because there isn't a screen separating the conversation. Not only do we lose confrontational skills we lose many conversational skills when texting online. Humans are starting to lose the importance of eye contact in a conversation. Looking and acting engaged in the conversation are very important, basic communication skills, but as we switch over to social media we tend to lose those skills. Along with many other skills including, reading the room, noticing context clues, and keeping the conversation going. We lose out on a lot of skills because of social media, but that's not the only problem we have. Scrolling through social media we don't know what is real and what is fake.

I have been a victim of the pointless, never-ending scrolling through social media. Whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or even Snapchat stories I can’t bring myself to stop scrolling. A lot of times I forget that half of what I am seeing is not real. As a young child, I often would look at pretty models and wish I looked like them. I was sad and confused as to why I didn't have a flat stomach and a perfectly symmetrical face with clear skin. I started constantly comparing myself to anyone and everyone that I saw. As a twelve-year-old girl, I started to do ab workouts, and watch what I eat, just so I could be like the pretty models. When in reality all of those girls I was watching felt the same way about themselves. Although I thought they were perfect, they believed they were far from it. So much of social media is false. When we scroll we believe we know everything and have all of the information in front of us. When in reality most of what we see on social media is not real. Images are photoshopped, the news is fake, and videos are scripted. We tend to put ourselves in an unfair position when all we look at is perfect. We feel that we aren’t good enough and our lives are boring. We see influencers have jam-packed interesting days, all while having a clean house, finding time to work out, eating healthy, and still getting a full eight hours of sleep. The thing with social media is that we never truly know what is real and what is not, whether it’s about someone’s personality, body, health, or lifestyle and how they spend their days. Social media is a great place to hide. We never have to show our insecurities, or flaws when online, but that perfectionism on our profile can lead to other people feeling bad about how they don’t live their life as influencers on social media do. Along with all of this, social media always makes relationships seem flawless. 

Relationships are hard on their own, but adding social media into the mix, it tends to make it even harder. An article entitled, “How Does Social Media Affect Relationships?” published on September 15th, 2021, by MedicalNewsToday, states that social media decreases quality time and relationship satisfaction. Platonic and romantic relationships are weakened because of social media. Instead of spending time speaking directly to each other and hanging out people decide that texting or calling is enough. As talked about before, speaking through the phone decreases emotional attachment to the conversation. It is also a lot easier to fight over the phone. From personal experience, social media ruins having a fun carefree time with friends. Whenever I would have a sleepover with my friends there was always one person that would be fighting with their boyfriend over text. The boyfriend gets mad and wants to know every detail of what they’re doing, or he doesn't like a picture his girlfriend posted. This caused us to have to console her instead of having fun. Because they are fighting, my friend is constantly checking her phone waiting for his response, and not paying attention to anyone else. This ultimately ends with us going to sleep when all we did together was talk about how stupid a boy was being. Social media also allows us to “ghost” people. Which is when randomly we cut off all ties with someone through social media, eventually leading to cutting off the friendship as a whole. Since teens are constantly communicating through social media they tend to cut off perfectly good relationships just because it’s so easy to stop talking. Healthy relationships can often be categorized as boring, just because there is not constant drama, and this leads teens to think that the relationship is boring and they want to find someone more fun, which can lead to bad situations. Social media can ruin relationships quickly and easily. Being able to cut off ties so easily can lead to isolation. 

An article called “Mental Health of Adolescents'', by the World Health Organization, published November 17th, 2021, states that 14% of teenagers are experiencing some form of mental illness. Isolation has become a lot easier ever since social media has gained popularity. People haven’t stopped talking and communicating with others, but they have stopped seeing each other in person. The less social interaction they have the less they want to go out in the future. Laying in bed all day in a dark room texting our friends is not the same as going out and having fun. We think we're getting all the social interaction we need through social media apps when instead texting is just distracting us from lonely feelings. The second we stop texting and sit in silence our mood starts to shift and we realize we’re all alone. Although we may be speaking to people, all we’re doing is tapping a screen while being in a dark, lonely, space. Isolation leads to many mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Overall, teenagers are struggling to get out of the never-ending scrolling and go interact with other humans because they feel they have been doing it all along when in reality, they’re distracting themselves from hard feelings. 

Social media weakens people's social abilities significantly. When we are constantly texting it's easy to stop communicating in person. This often leads to a lack of emotion, not fully understanding and connecting to the other person while they are speaking. When we’re unable to connect to the person we’re speaking to we tend to lose our conversational skills and don't know how to have a proper conversation. Social media is fake, but we often can't see that and compare ourselves to influencers who get paid to have an interesting life. Always being on social media can affect relationships. It reduces time spent together and can even cause a lot of arguments, whether it's between friends or a romantic partner. It’s surprisingly easy to cut off relationships that may be healthy. Not talking to someone is easier than ever when all we have to do is simply not respond to a text, open a Snapchat, or comment on a TikTok. Easily being able to ghost people can end in severe isolation. Many teenagers feel lonely and use isolation as a coping mechanism. Being able to still communicate with people makes it super easy for us to isolate ourselves in our rooms. Mental health issues can be caused by using social media to distract ourselves from facing hard feelings. Ultimately, social media is causing us to become less social and is negatively impacting our lives. The little kid inside of me would not be proud to hear that I have turned into everyone else, by using social media and being attached to my phone. I believe that everybody spends too much time on social media and we need to try and make it a safer, healthier place for kids to communicate and have fun.