Over the last 20 years, social media has slowly became a significant part of many people’s lives. How many of us check our social media before getting out of bed? Checking if anybody’s messaged us, scrolling through some posts or videos or posting a morning update to your followers. Social media provides great ways to keep in contact with people or re-connect with those you haven’t spoken to in years. For me, scrolling through my different feeds helps me pass time. The issue is, time and time again we’re hearing about the negative impact social media has, especially for young people. 

Growing up, I have had mixed experiences. I’ve seen harmful content, I’ve had videos publicly shared of me without consent, I’ve had people create fake profiles in my name and I’ve been called names by complete strangers. Despite all of this, social media, as a whole, has been positive for me however when you look at the big picture, it does raise questions. 

Social media means it is very easy to stay in contact 24/7 with friends, even if they’re in different countries. The issue is, it also means that you can end up being in 24/7 contact with your bullies. From a The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey, it was found that in 2024 17% of young people reported experiencing cyberbullying. Where the simple solution may just be to delete or block the bullies, in practice it’s not that straight forward. They could be in group chats with mutual friends, sharing things on their own profiles for others to see or creating fake profiles, to just name a few possibilities. Where the bullying would stop at the school gates, it’s now at people’s fingertips 24/7. 

Another danger surrounding social media is the accessing of harmful materials and algorithms. Whilst technology has improved over the years, I still remember when I was growing up that a 2 second Google search led to a site explaining various methods of suicide and going into depth surrounding it. The risk that is often spoken about with social media is how, once you start looking at or searching certain things, the algorithms fill your feed with that content. Whilst social media platforms have been working on preventing harmful content, two issues arise from it. 

The first is how they aren’t doing enough; I recall a video with hundreds of thousands of views of somebody taking their own life. I only watched the video thinking it was nothing to do with mental health or suicide but, once I realised what it was, I immediately reported it. Despite hundreds in the comments stating they’ve reported it and a petition being raised with around 2,000 signatures for the social media platform to delete it, it only got deleted weeks later. The other issue posed by social media platforms is, when they try and block content, they also block positive content, such as those raising awareness of helplines available or someone sharing their experiences. Now-a-days, any use the term to ‘unalive themselves’ for fear of their content being deleted if they say the word ‘suicide’. 

Whether it be a website, forum or videos, there is a risk that it’s not always obvious at first glance if it is a safe site. An example that will always stick with me is if you saw ‘www.MartinLutherKing.org‘ you would think that would be a very informative, safe to use website but it transpired to be a White Supremacist website (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-supremacist-site-ma_b_809755). The same can be said for support groups on social media; whilst some are great there are others that post harmful content. The issue this poses is that someone may not realise it is harmful until it’s too late; whether that be they’ve read harmful content, they are targeted by bullies or they have their negative perceptions further pushed for them to think they’re correct. 

Should young people be allowed on social media? In my personal opinion, yes. However, young people need to be taught both about internet safety and how to look after their own mental health.   If a young person chooses not to be on social media, they should not be singled out. For those that are on social media, the protection needs to be there that harmful content gets removed and they need to be given the support by the adults around them that, if there is a problem, they feel comfortable speaking up and receive the support needed. 

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