Why you should delete social media

Alex Johnston

What is something that you probably spend a lot of your day on but don’t get very much if anything out of? Social media is something that almost everyone has nowadays, whether it’s Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Almost everyone has some form of it. A lot of you have probably heard all about the harms and effects it can have on you and how bad it is. But instead of doing something about it and just brushing it off, listen and act on it. I ignored these harms and effects for years while I had it, but then I stopped and really thought about it and what I’m doing on it, and getting out of it, and finally deleted it. All of this and more is why I think that you should delete social media.

One of the first main reasons why you should delete social media is what you have probably heard over and over and over again: all the side effects and harms. I think that a lot of people will listen to these facts and not be very persuaded by them because of how attached they are to social media. But it's important to know that these are facts not opinions. One argument that you probably hear a lot is about sucide. For example from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “This meta-analysis provides evidence that internet addiction is associated with increased suicidality even after adjusting for potential confounding variables including depression.” Though social media and internet addiction are two separate things, one can lead to the other very easily. In addition, I think that a lot of people are addicted to social media and do not realize it. According to the Cambridge Core, social media companies try and make their apps as addictive as possible and most of the time are not paying attention to the effects of it. One easy example I can think of is Snapchat. One of the main features of Snapchat is streaks, where if you and another person keep sending things to each other every day, your streak builds up. Though it may seem like a fun thing to keep track of, it's a pretty blatant way of getting you to open the app every single day. For example, when I had it I knew that I’d be opening it every day to keep up with the streaks without a real reason. Things like these are exactly how easy it is to get addicted to these social media apps and how it can lead to so many other problems.

So you know the harms of social media but what causes them? As I already talked about in the last paragraph, a lot of companies try to make their app addictive, but what else is causing these effects? According to Business Insider, one of the most used social media apps TikTok was filtering out people that they didn’t think were appealing enough for the viewer: “‘If the character's appearance or the shooting environment is not good, the video will be much less attractive,’ and was not worth recommending to TikTok users, the policy, published by The Intercept, said.” Though I never had TikTok and never plan to, this is unacceptable. This just shows how much the companies don’t care about you as a person. When you scroll through social media, an important thing to remember is you aren’t the customer, you're the product. All the companies truly want is for you to spend as much time as possible on the app, to get your data, and to show you ads. The companies don’t care what you see, they just care that you see it and keep watching. The last thing that I think can really cause these effects is the “like” button. It does seem pretty harmless on it’s own, but it builds this sense of always comparing and trying to be better than someone else even though it just doesn’t matter.

Now you know why these companies do it, and the harms and effects. But I think the most convincing thing is experience. Through my experience, when I had social media, I remember unconsciously opening it when I got up and I went to bed and whenever I didn't have something to do. This is proven from the New York Times: “And a new report from Common Sense Media emphasizes the ways that mobile devices have invaded our bedrooms, with both teenagers and their parents reporting waking up to check their devices, and using them right before falling asleep — and first thing on waking up.” For me, the main reason I deleted social media apps was what I was doing on them. During COVID, my screen time went to an all-time high with nothing to do and I spent almost all my time on Instagram and Snapchat. I’d scroll through posts or videos all day, and I started realizing that I wasn’t seeing anything. I saw things, but nothing stuck with me or meant anything. I’d see a cool video someone made, but it meant nothing. I found I could scroll for hours and find nothing. I could wake up the next day and nothing would stick with me. At a certain point, I thought about deleting it, which sounds simple, but I kept making as many stupid excuses as possible. What finally made me delete social media was just the fact that I would try to find every possible way to not delete it, and I realized how sad it was, and reliant on it I was, even though there was nothing to be reliant on.

Though the harms and what causes them are serious, no matter how many times you say them, people don’t really care. Even after the terrible discriminational policies TikTok made, millions of people still use it. I remember when I had social media and I’d see or read things like this telling me to delete it, and I’d brush it off. If none of this convinces you, at least think and ask yourself. What am I doing while on social media? I don’t mean texting or scrolling through posts, I mean what are you really doing? When you spend hours looking at things, what are you looking at? But most importantly, is it worth i

Works Cited

Cheng YS et al. Internet Addiction and Its Relationship With Suicidal Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis of Multinational Observational Studies, The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, (U.S. National Library of Medicine). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29877640/ Accessed Feb. 24, 2021.

Bhargava, Vikram R, and Manuel Velasquez, Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction: Business Ethics Quarterly, (Cambridge Core). Cambridge University Press, 6 Oct. 2020, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/ethics-of-the-attention-economy-the-problem-of-social-media-addiction/1CC67609A12E9A912BB8A291FDFFE799 Accessed Feb. 24, 2021.

Klass, Perri, When Social Media Is Really Problematic for Adolescents, (The New York Times). 3 June 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/well/family/teenagers-social-media.html Accessed Feb. 24, 2021.

Perrett, Connor, TikTok Memo Directed Censorship of Users Deemed Ugly, Overweight, or Disabled, and Banned Users for Livestreams That Criticized Governments, (Business Insider). 16 Mar. 2020, www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-censorship-users-deemed-ugly-overweight-or-disabled-2020-3 Accessed Feb. 26, 2021.