**The column below represents the personal views of the student journalist.

Four days a week, I scroll through social media, and it’s not just a quick check between classes. I’m talking about two straight hours after school or late at night. I bounce from sending messages to my friends on Snapchat to scrolling on my page on Instagram to make sure I’m aesthetically pleasing enough, then end up on TikTok, where I’m watching videos of other people’s lives and losing track of time. 

For most high school students, from freshmen to seniors, these apps are a daily routine. 96% of teenagers use social media daily, according to the Pew Research Center. The whole point of social media is meant to be fun, creative, and a way to stay connected. Walking down the hallway, listening to a song you found on TikTok. It doesn’t seem harmful to you; you think you’re just getting ideas from online that you are interested in. But even though social media does make us feel good sometimes and makes it easier to do things, it also has side effects that affect teenagers like me in ways we don’t always notice. 

Any kid or teenager would admit, “Yeah, social media makes me feel bad.” But the one thing they don’t understand about that statement is the why. 

When you are scrolling for hours on your feed, reposting videos about your feelings, and watching other people’s lifestyles, this is ruining your perception of life. Every time you see a video or photo from that famous influencer or even some random person on the internet who has something that interests you, your instant reaction to that video or picture is a comparison. You are constantly comparing yourself to people you may or may not know without even realizing it. Don Grant uses the phrase “compare and despair” to describe the negative social comparison young people engage in when scrolling through the apps, according to Newport’s National Advisor of Healthy Device Management. 

Have you ever gotten off your phone, and you suddenly have no motivation to do anything, literally anything? I mean, not even getting up to turn off your light. It is tough on teenagers, and I’m not here to criticize this generation with the new advanced technology that social media has created. I have struggled with doomscrolling for as long as I can remember, having my hands on social media. I’ve even taken a 2-month break from all social media, and my life felt so boring. This feeling makes you realize what reality we are living in and how dependent we are on social media. Believe it or not, studies have shown 48% of teenagers openly admit to realizing that sites they cross negatively affect people their age, according to the Pew Research Center. Although this is great information, we should dive deeper into why kids are saying this or what it is they really mean.

Now, let’s look at the psychology part of this. Sit back and think about how many people you know who are actually mature and are your age. Now I’m not talking about people who call people out about a problem; I’m talking about the people who get their work done, people who are considerate of other people’s feelings. Not many, huh? It’s okay; teenagers have developing brains all the way up until they are 25. We often forget how young we actually are, and this goes along with what we consume from the internet. 54% of teens get their news from social media rather than from any other sources, according to Common Sense Media. We really are easily manipulated by other people’s opinions and interests online. 

Any time you see something remotely controversial or interesting, you will grasp onto anything you see come your way, and that’s the thing: social media has algorithms that will suggest videos to you that are only based on past videos you’ve liked. This isn’t healthy for our brains; it makes us one-sided and judgmental towards others. Professionals have said algorithms tend to show us content with our existing beliefs, according to Legal Professionals Inc. 

We can’t trust anything we see online, but how do we stop it? What can we do? Well, technology only finds its way to advance more and more, but we can take the initiative to become more aware of what it’s capable of. We can set limits on what we see and how much we see, and even focus more on what’s happening in our lives and make a change for who we are as people, instead of doing it online. With that, I have told myself I am going to limit my time on social media and focus on my individual life, and we will see where that takes me.