Social Media is a danger to our world. Although some treat social media as something light-hearted and as a fun pastime, it could easily turn into something darker for others. Those who are the most susceptible to the dangers of social media are the vulnerable, specifically young people. Social Media is a drug. It plagues and consumes our minds. But how can something that seems so harmless be so evil? You can scroll mindlessly for hours at a time, constantly consuming media that you won't remember the next day. It can put thoughts in your head like, ¨Everybody at school is going out of state for vacation, but I'm at home because my parents have to work. These girls on Instagram look so pretty all the time, why don't I look like that? I want her body-oh, she has a diet plan? I´ll follow that too! Everyone has a boyfriend, why don't I? Why don't I have what everyone else has? My life sucks, i´m missing out on so much.” Social media only shows the fabricated side of people and is not reality, though it can be easy to fall into the trap of comparison. This is why it's so dangerous to have social media as a teenager or even younger.

The first stage of social media: downloading social media for the first time. Your friends probably told you to download it so you did. They said it's fun, you can make videos and see what others post, even people from your school! So you create your new account and start to check all of the features. Scrolling through the videos, there´s cute animal videos, some of the animals were foreign, adding to your interest in the videos. They were addicting, you kept scrolling for more of the cute dogs and puppies playing around with cute background music, it seems so innocent. Then a couple of cooking videos pop up, you could really use these recipes in the future, so you keep scrolling and scrolling until something different pops up.

Stage two: It's more sad, more deep, and appealing to your emotions. It's a video of a girl lying on her bed wearing a sad expression, there's text above her talking about how she feels alone and depressed with blue lights in her room. You feel sad for the girl, could you not? She seems like she's suffering and her whole video seems to radiate sadness, unconsciously appealing to your emotions. Going to the comments, you find everyone talking in long paragraphs about how bad their life is or serious issues they're going through. You don't think once about how crazy it is, these strangers are talking about such personal issues to other strangers online, no, you think about the bad things in your life too. You begin to feel sad as well, maybe even believing that certain issues in your life are a lot worse than they actually are to feel like you´re validated too.

Stage three: You start to get deeper and deeper into social media as the days and months go by. By now, you pick your phone up out of instinct because it´s a vice you've picked up, you crave the instant satisfaction you get from watching cute videos, or the validation you get in the comments of those dark videos, even though there's nothing truly going wrong in your life. You learn to crave the attention you get from those strangers in the comments, who were influenced just like you to feel like your life is terrible. You and that group of strangers who console each other, feeding off each other to feel even more sad. You´re in so deep that you don't even realize what you´re doing. You´re oversharing and you´re being influenced to become someone you´re not. You´ve come across videos that you should never have seen because they're so sick; but you're blind, you can't see the damage that you've caused to yourself and those strangers who you console and who console you in return. 

Stage four: Somehow, you've managed to get out of the dark hole you've slowly dug yourself. You decided to climb out of the bad, depressing, evil hole that seduced you. You realize how bad your mental state was all because of social media. You take a break and realize how good you have it, your friends, family, and life are so much better than you had been influenced to believe. Finally, you see the mistake you made: you let everything about social media influence you.

You see, social media doesn't have to be a bad thing. Let it stay as something positive, something light-hearted. Scroll past those dark and depressing videos that fill your mind with dark thoughts. Keep the videos on the topics you truly enjoy, or accounts you like. Learn to be smart and conservative when it comes to sharing things about yourself to strangers on the internet. Finally, don't be vulnerable, protect your mind. Social media is a place of creativity, new ideas, and a community, don't let it become anything else.