Social media causes teens to compare their own lives with the unrealistic ones on social media, which can lead to some mental disorders, such as depression or eating disorders. It can also make teens compare themselves to the unrealistic stereotypes, or stigma online, making them uncertain or dislike their body shapes, who they are, what they define as, or others.
Mental health stigma exists because of social media. Some people believe that mental health disorders are jokes, and just portray them as crazy or weird, causing unnecessary stereotypes and unrealistic images whenever these disorders are mentioned. To reduce stigma, we could stop portraying people with mental health as jokes or memes. Also, we could phrase our words carefully. Instead of saying, “anorexia person”, we could say, “that person with anorexia”, to make sure that we are not defining other people by their disorders.
In this unit, we have learned about how mental health conditions are just as, or sometimes even more important to cure and treat than physical health conditions. There are many types of mental health conditions, for example, PTSD, OCD, bipolar, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and many more. Also, people with mental health conditions are not crazy and weird, they are people who need help. Teens should understand them better because we need to know what these people are facing and how we can help them, or ourselves, just in case.
My evidence revealed that the impact of cell phones on teen social-emotional health and relationships was positive. High school students will mostly be engaged in outside school activities for their AP/IB, so they probably won’t be on their phone as much during middle school.
I believe that increased cell phone access probably won’t affect my social-emotional health and relationships, because I have already deleted APPs unnecessary for my learning, and I’ve already made a habit of putting my phone outside my room at nights. Also, according to my grades on Schoology, you can say that there are no missing assignments, only a few lates, and mostly 3’s, with the occasional 2’s. I’m pretty sure my parents would agree with me, because they almost never get disappointed with me with grades. (TBH, I only don’t have overdues or 1’s and 2’s because it feels out of place (those red letters actually drive me crazy).
Some strategies to ensure my phone does not decrease the quality of my emotional health and relationships at school in high school are: 1) pretend that you are still in middle school and that you are not allowed to take out your phone unless for an emergency. 2) keep your phone in places where it would not distract you (e.g. outside your room, in a drawer, in your bag) 3) use an alarm instead of using your phone because you will definitely get distracted.
