It is time to ban social media completely for under 18s. Social media has gone too far in our age.

95% of all teens use social media with a third of these teens saying that they use it “almost constantly”. An advisory said that teens that use social media for more than 3 hours a day double the risk of poor mental health outcomes. This is because an average teen may experience videos that cause them to experience low self-esteem, poor body image or an eating disorder; 2 in 3 adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content on social media. 714 15-24 year olds committed suicide in 2018 (9.1 people per 100,000 people) and this has been shown by numerous studies to have been caused by an increase in social media usage.

Another point worth mentioning is that social media has led to a lesser promotion of real-world connection. Many people have suggested that excessive use of social media can lead to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which are crucial for the development of social skills. Banning social media for the under-18 year old age group would encourage more meaningful offline relationships.

TikTok has come under recent scrutiny from the US government due to data privacy practices, including the collection and handling of user data. Critics have expressed concerns that the Chinese government could potentially access or influence the data collected by TikTok, given its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. Most companies based in China are influenced or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (the government) which means that the Chinese, who are not trusted by the West, could be accessing all our personal data.

An example of where we saw the harmful effects of social media was the death of Molly Russell on the 20th of November 2017. She had saved, liked or shared 2,100 pieces of content related to suicide, self-harm and depression and it was on Instagram where Molly Russell had seen graphic videos that led to her taking her own life. Without social media, she would not have seen content rated 15 or 18 in the UK that would have led to depression that ultimately resulted in her own death.

I would like to conclude that social media is harmful and should be banned; the risk it poses to our generation is larger than most people anticipate.