Social media affects tween girls’ mental health in more ways than we think. The challenge of facing their transition from childhood to teenage years often makes them hooked on the internet.
Experts say that social media is one of the significant factors that affect the mental health of tween girls nowadays. The cases of mental illness among youngsters are rising drastically as time passes.
In this article, you’ll read:
- Who Are the Tweens?
- 5 Ways Social Media Affects Tween Girls’ Mental Health
- The Relation Between Social Media and the Mental Health of Youngsters
Who Are the Tweens?
Tween is often used to label a young age group between a child and a teenager. These children typically age between 10 to 13 years old.
This group of youngsters are commonly in middle school in the USA or secondary school in Asian countries. Kids in this age group often face the transition into puberty. Additionally, they go along with all the challenges that come with adolescence.
At this age, tweens are starting to become mature. They are entering the teenage phase of their life—may it be the physical, emotional, or social aspect of their lives.
The Relation Between Social Media and the Mental Health of Youngsters
While tweens are becoming more mature, they also begin being exposed to the world around them, including the world of social media. This especially applies to tween girls’ mental health due to society’s treatment of girls and women.
Indeed, social media has become an enormous part of every individual’s life nowadays, especially among young people. They mostly use it to connect with future classmates or old friends. Tweens also use social media to update family and friends that live from afar.
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Unfortunately, social media is not always a good thing. At times, it could negatively impact the lives of people, especial the younger social media users.
In relation to this, social media poses a negative effect on the mental health of tweens. Experts say that the use of social media among tweens could lead to different mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety.
5 Ways Social Media Affects Tween Girls’ Mental Health
Social media has become addictive to people, most especially among youngsters. Studies have found that social networking is vastly related to broadening teen social connections. Additionally, social media also helps tweens and teens to learn technical skills.
Indeed, several factors can significantly impact the lives of teenagers nowadays. The use of social media can dramatically affect a teenager’s developing brain.
Unfortunately, since they are still in the process of development, their developing brains could be vulnerable to social media. Aside from that, tween girls’ mental health often becomes more susceptible to adverse effects of social media, such as peer pressure, cyberbullying, and sexting.
In addition, tweens spending too much time using social media may lead to several mental health issues. Here are the most common problems that tweens could encounter and experience upon continuing the excessive use of social media:
Sleep Deprivation
The negative effects of social media on tween girls’ mental health usually start with a lack of sleep. During this age, they naturally stay late due to puberty.
However, tweens spending too much time on social media most likely experience sleep deprivation. They would start to lose valuable sleep if they began excessive social media usage, especially when they become addicted to it.
Unfortunately, sleep deprivation could also lead to other problems and issues like moodiness, lack of focus and physical activities, overeating, and other mental health issues.
Issues in Communicating With People
Indeed, social media is one of the best and easiest ways to communicate with friends, family, and loved ones. However, it will never be the same as face-to-face communication.
Social media could also cause some misunderstandings among people. It is because people can hardly identify the true intention of people online.
As a result, relationships between friends, families, and loved ones could also suffer because of social media. Their relationships with people around them and their own life could also suffer.
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Becoming Jealous and Envy
Social media makes it easy to feel jealous and envious—these are normal feelings anyone could handle. It is because social media is the easiest way for people to make comparisons between themselves and others.
By simply scrolling, teens can easily see the exciting and best part of other people’s lives. It could be the moment when they start comparing themselves to others.
However, there are things that teens do not quickly realise. They often don’t know that most people only post the highlights of their lives. Most of them keep the boring and difficult parts of their lives off their social media account.
Developing Teen Anxiety
Once young people start creating social media accounts, they also begin to feel emotionally invested. With the lots of things they see online, they feel pressure to do something and be what they see on social media.
It might be saddening, but most teens need to respond quickly online, especially to new trends. They also feel pressured to build the perfect image of themselves online.
Unfortunately, these are the things that could lead to anxiety among teenagers. They experience anxiety upon feeling the need to keep up with everything online.
Prone to Pre-teen or Teen Depression
Experts found that there is a link between depression and social media. They say that social media can be associated with an intensification of the symptoms of depression.
Additionally, studies have found that people with more than seven social media platforms are more at risk of depression. Prolonged screen time of teens could lead to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
This article has been republished with the permission of theAsianparent Singapore.