Essay Draft 4
In today’s society there is an increasing trend that social
media websites are causing anxiety among users. It is normal to notice that
when young people post a cute photo on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or other social
media websites, they keep on checking every few minutes or hours to see whether
their posts have been liked or shared. This phenomenon reflects that frequently
using the social media actually makes people
feel inadequate and creates excessive fear and pressure. Such social anxiety
has been termed “social media anxiety disorder. ” (Social Media Anxiety
Disorder,2015) This social condition is gradually acquired when an individual
frequently uses social media, and this in turn adversely affects that person’s
mental health. While the most vulnerable
group would be teenagers and young adults who are usually not very
self-disciplined and not always being capable to control themselves, it is the
responsibility of parents and school counselors to help them better understand
the negative impact of using social media and meanwhile, to conduct some
effective programs for those problematic students so as to minimize the social
media anxiety disorder.
Such a phenomenon is especially prominent in the U.S. where
half of the adults and three-quarters of all teenagers are active social networking site (SNS) users, and it has been highlighted that after alcoholism and
depression, social anxiety disorder is the third largest psychological disorder
in the U.S. (Hampton, Goulet, Marlow, & Rainie, 2012). Because today’s
society has been shifted to be technology and internet dependent, people will
be shocked if someone never uses social media at all, and a recent study conducted by the
University of Bergen in Norway reports that people who are more anxious and
socially insecure are more likely to use a social networking site (Andreassen,
2012). An
another study released by non-profit
Anxiety UK indicates that people do feel anxious
and uncomfortable if they are unable to log into their social networking
accounts (Fitzgerald, 2012). These facts reflect how serious social media
anxiety disorder is and that the situation may become worse.
To minimize and address the negative impact of using social
media, one possible solution is that parents and schools should focus on limiting the
time that their children and students spend on social media, and parents should
also encourage them to unplug for extended days. Through disconnecting the young people from
SNS for certain periods of time, the level of social media anxiety disorder can
be reduced comparatively. Greater improvement will be obtained with longer time staying away from
social media. If a child is getting no substantial
return from using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter throughout
the whole day, he should cut ties with social media websites purposely for
certain periods of time, so as to limit the usage of social networking sites.
Currently, there are some applications and tools available, which assist
parents and schools to control the time that their children spend on social
media networks. For instance, Rescue Time’s website is designed to control the
time that users would have spent on social media to be within 4 hours per week.
This program is also capable to ban certain websites, and track and log how
many times one spends on particular websites that have been specified.
Additionally, another useful application is Facebook Limiter, which is created
to disconnect users from Facebook and YouTube. It is especially beneficial for
parents who have children with serious problems of social media anxiety, since
with assistance of this software, they are empowered to block Facebook
entirely, restrict the time of using Facebook or make it accessible only at a
specific time in a day (French, 2012). Social media anxiety can be
progressively treated if a child can control himself very well and unplug from
the social media websites for extended days.
There is no denying that applications
designed to limit the time of using social media websites can serve to assist
young people to be better self-controlled so as to achieve higher realization
in solving social media anxiety. However, this may not be effectively
conducted, as not every child has the equal power to control and discipline
themselves routinely. Whether the
social media anxiety can be effectively solved or not is mainly depending on
children’s awareness and self-control capability. Therefore, educators, school
counselors and parents can consider the cognitive methods
and work together to develop some programs involving cognitive education so as
to address this problem through a more effective manner.
“Cognitive
behavioral treatment (CBT) is a form of treatment that focuses on examining the relationships
between thoughts, feelings and behaviors” (Duckworth & Freedman, 2012). It is used to help young people
understand and become aware of the adverse consequences in adequately using
social media websites. CBT permits changes within addictive young users’
brains, so that they can think and treat social
media differently and gradually release themselves from over-participation in
social media sites. Unlike the traditional therapies, CBT ensures the patient to actively work
together to help the patient recover from their mental illness (Duckworth & Freedman, 2012). Through fully conducting such cognitive behavioral therapy, young people
who have similar social media anxiety issues are engaged in practical
activities that are normally anxiety-causing, and proceed in a flexible and
scheduled way (Richards, n.d.). By continuous practicing and repeating, *the anxious feeling embraced by the
young people who are addictive in social media will be gradually reduced and a
better outcome obtained. CBT affects young people’s brain operating processes,
making them feel, think and behave differently. Children and young adults can be released from social media anxiety
disorder by keeping on
practicing and developing this
method which treats them mentally and cognitively, and this is the root that
can lead to behavioral control in using social media websites. Therefore, school counselors and psychologist can employ such cognitive strategies and develop some
relative programs to help problematic children and young people release from social media anxiety disorder.
In
conclusion, social media is indeed creating anxiety among young people and kids
with an increasing trend. To effectively minimize this problem, educators,
teachers and school psychologists can conduct cognitive therapies, strategies
and concepts to train their students to be more self-disciplined and controlled
in using social media websites.
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