Although it may be hard to prove that the use of social technology is actually making us kids and adolescents “crazy”, it does have detrimental effects on our psychological well-beings. Over time, the use of technology has been more targeted to young people, specifically adolescents. In today’s society, younger people are getting a lot of exposure to things like texting, social media, and other online forms of communication. For me, as an 19-year-old college student, social technology plays a major role in my life. I find myself checking my social media and messages multiple times a day, which consumes a lot of attention. It is a part of everyday life for a lot of young people, and it has begun to negatively impact kids and adolescents’ mental states. With this, the social technology platforms that they are using can cause antisocial traits, self-esteem issues, and other mental issues.

People need to see and learn about the negative effects that they may have not realized are happening. People our age are so caught up in the social media world that we don’t necessarily realize what is happening to us. A large problem that goes along with social technology’s effect on our psychological well-being is the development of antisocial issues.Morgan Hampton, a journalist for the Daily Universe, looked into these antisocial tendencies that come along with the overuse of social technology and found that children and teens have become more dependent on electronics, rather than on human interaction. As an example of this, she wrote, “They may have an Instagram account with hundreds of followers and still feel like they do not have any friends”. This shows that the use of these different types of social media is manipulative and may be putting false ideas of comfort and bonding into their heads. By relying on online platforms to be the base of their social lives, children and teens are tricking themselves into believing that this is what true companionship is. Children and adolescents need empathy and relationships in order to confidently develop, and this social technology is taking that away from them. A study done by Larry Rosen, a research psychologist, and journalist for the Wall Street Journal, found that empathy given through online communication is only one-sixth as effective in making the receiver feel socially supported by the other person. With this, people need to realize that if this trend continues, these adolescents won’t be able to distinguish between the relationships they are making face-to-face and online. The value of face-to-face communication and relationship building is something that isn’t being taught anymore, even though it needs to be. The line between the face-to-face and the online social world is continuously blurring, and people are forgetting that they are not the same thing.

Another problem that goes along with the use of social technology in teens is self-esteem and confidence issues. The use of social media and online communication has the ability to detrimentally affect the self-esteem of young children and adolescents. First, these online platforms are able to persuade young people, especially girls, that they need to strive for a certain life, body, and look. Often, models and celebrities use social media to depict their lives and their fame, which can cause the normal people using these sites to become confused on what is normal. Second, many of these young users depend on social media to increase their feelings of self-worth. To analyze this, Psychologists Nesi and Prinstein conducted a study that focused on adolescents use of social technology and found they are using these platforms to receive feedback on their lives, as well as compare themselves to others. The use of these social technology platforms are allowing adolescents to attribute the value of their lives in accordance with the amount of “likes” they receive. It is creating a false sense of importance and is causing these teens to question their own worth. Along with this, Clarissa Silva’s article on The Huffington Post focused on how the use of social technology can be closely linked to feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. She states that, “For some, projecting what they want people to see and getting likes, plusses, retweets, and shares helps them feel better about themselves and connected to others.” This just shows that these online users depend on their social media presence to make themselves feel better about themselves and their lives. This is a huge and growing problem that faces our society. In addition to adolescents developing conditions such as depression and anxiety, it can also lead to eating disorders in order to fit this normal mold that social technology promotes. As of right now, this trend is still steadily increasing. More and more young people will be faced with this manipulative online environment, and more and more of these adolescents will face the challenges I talked about. Confidence is something that needs to increase in our world, not decrease. Although this online world could have the potential to be extremely beneficial to the people in our society, it is being used and promoted in a way that does the opposite.

Whether or not social technology is making us kids and adolescents “crazy” is something that is hard to answer. The definition of “crazy” can differ among people. However, shown through the information that I wrote about, social technology does have the ability to affect our mental states and may drive us to get to this point of “crazy”. Social technology is such a normal and routine part of a lot of teenagers lives, even though it may be hindering our psychological well-being in the process. I don’t believe that the use of technology should have this ability, and I don’t think it was created to do this. It has increasingly advanced our medical, educational, and business worlds, but it is making its way into the minds of children and leading them down the wrong path.