OPINION: Social media can be damaging

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that rates of mental health struggles and severe depression in teens have steadily risen over the last 40 years.

There are many potential reasons teenage suicide rates may be on the rise — namely more rigorous academic and professional pressures — but social media and its powerful, sometimes dangerous hold on American youth are also powerful factors in the equation. Social media’s omnipresence reaps profoundly negative consequences for all. And while social progress has inched forward in recent years, social media still tends to promote unattainable standards and hurtful stereotypes.

The Royal Society for Public Health, a United Kingdom-based charity and research institute, released a study in May measuring the costs and benefits of using social media. What it found was unsurprising: Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook reliably produce negative effects for a significant portion of their users. Half of the study’s respondents reported escalating feelings of anxiety from the use of Instagram and Facebook. And Instagram was found to produce the most negative effects. Seventy percent of respondents reported feeling less confident with their body images when using Instagram.

Body image issues transcend the surface and contribute to mental health issues, such as depression and, for young women, eating disorders. A 2014 University of Pittsburgh study, which surveyed over 1,700 adults between the ages of 19 and 32 highlights the sharp, undeniable correlation between excessive social media use and eating disorders. The study concluded that those who check their social media accounts the most often on a daily basis are more than twice as likely to develop eating disorders.

Some of the mental health issues that spring at least in part from high social media consumption are exacerbated to the point that people take their own lives. And the unique relationship between young people and social media, which has risen to be a more dominant force in their lifetimes than for any other generation, comes at a time that suicide claims the lives of more young women between the ages of 15 and 19 years than any other cause of death, according to the National Institute of Health. This disheartening reality is often overshadowed by misogynistic stereotypes, one of which mischaracterizes female suicidality as a ploy for attention. We must have zero tolerance for this kind of rhetoric, as it is a masked attempt to brush an important problem aside.

These higher rates of mental health issues among today’s youth can have resounding consequences. Though there is no evidence of a direct correlation between mental health issues stemming from social media usage and suicide, the startling increase in teen suicides in recent years brings another dimension to the mental health conversation among adolescents. From 2007 to 2015, 10.8 to 14.2 per 100,000 male teenagers committed suicide, and 2.4 to 5.1 per 100,000 female teenagers committed suicide. In 2011, for the first time in more than two decades, more teenagers died from suicide than from homicide. And on college campuses, 2016 data from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention showed that one in 12 college students will develop a plan for suicide.

A study from the Oregon Health and Science University suggests that face-to-face interaction can play a role in countering depression, and could be one part of the solution to mental health disorders stemming from excessive social media use. Ultimately, while broad societal issues such as this one do not have instant cures, awareness of such issues and their nuances and, more than anything, awareness of the resources available to suffering people, are the best starting point.

USC Engemann Student Health Center offers counseling services to students on and off campus, and many campus organizations and student groups provide similar services and support. One substantial obstacle to improving mental health and lowering rates of teen suicide is ensuring that students know their options, and it’s crucial that USC and all universities broadcast and educate about the resources they offer as much as they can. Ironically enough, social media could be one way to powerfully boost these efforts.