Negative Effects of Social Media on the Mental Health of Children & Adolescents | Free Antivirus

The worrying negative effects of social media on the mental health of children and adolescents

When Dr Rangan Chatterjee from the UK first saw a 16-year-old boy who had injured himself and ended up in the ER, his first thought was to give him antidepressants.

So instead of medicating him, he proposed a simple solution: he should try to disengage from social networks.

At first eliminating its use one hour before going to bed and, with the passage of several weeks, increasing it to two hours in the morning and two hours before

That and similar cases have led Chatterjee to question the role social media plays in the lives of children and young people.

A few weeks ago, a hundred child welfare experts in the United States asked Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to close Messenger Kids, an application developed specifically for children

between 6 and 13 years old , arguing that it is an irresponsible platform.

"It is irresponsible to encourage children to use Facebook": the letter from pediatricians and educators to Zuckerberg against Messenger Kids

A 2017 study by the Royal Society of Public Health in the UK of 1,500 young people aged 11-25 found that Snapchat and Instagram were the social media most likely

to inspire feelings of anxiety and inappropriateness .

Seven in ten said Instagram made them feel worse about their body image, half said Instagram and Facebook exacerbated their anxiety, and two-thirds said Facebook made cyberbullying worse.

Shirley Cramer, who led the study, concluded that social media is now " intrinsically linked to mental health ."

Although Facebook, Twitter and Instagram officially ban accounts of children under 13 years of age, in practice they cannot verify the age of their users, and that is one of

the problems that the British health authorities have raised with social networks.

According to a 2017 study by the British entity that regulates the media, half of the country's 11 and 12-year-old children had a profile on one of those social networks

Psychiatrist Louise Theodosius has noted an increase in cases where social media is a contributing factor to depression, anxiety and other mental problems in minors.

The problems are varied and complex : they range from addiction to gaming platforms and social networks to cyberbullying , to the incidence of feelings of being inappropriate , caused

cell phones to end the messages that distress them."

According to Theodosius, cyberbullying can have a more intense effect than bullying in the schoolyard.

Another group of minors that worries him most, although "fortunately" the cases are "rare", is that of children who stop going out due to their addiction to social networks, gaming

These children often refuse to go out for psychiatrist appointments, so different health professionals have to visit home with them to deal with the problem.

They may have a physical problem, like a toothache, but they still don't want to leave their virtual worlds," Theodosius said.

According to the expert, even for children whose use of social networks is considered normal, there is danger in the way in which the internet has become a channel to

"Young people have the need to compulsively look at others and they get upset because they feel that their lives are not like that", commented the psychiatrist, "my impression is

that they believe that their friends have better lives than theirs , even if they only see one version idealized life of others.

You've heard of some who sleep with the router to make sure their kids don't connect to the wireless network in the middle of the night.

Here are some recommendations that experts and parents have shared:

Monitor how much time children spend online and make sure it doesn't interfere with activities like socializing, eating, sleeping, or exercising.

Consider banning electronics during meals and one hour before bed.

Talk to kids regularly about what they're doing online, what they shared today, who they became friends with, and how it affects their mood.

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