Social media has become a part of 21 century teenager’s life. Many teenagers, as vulnerable group of people, has spent hours on it without realizing that the undergoing leakage of personal privacy, impacts on personal mental health, and being the target of political manipulation are happening to them. These problems are not just physically and mentally harmful to our next generation but also impacting our democracy system. Thus, I believe that social media should be banned completely for teenagers, specifically for people who are under age 19.

Everyone is a victim of privacy leakage from all the social media they use, yet on the legal prospective, you agree the companies to do so. When the first time you opened an app, you are always being asked to agree some extremely long terms, and almost everyone will click on the “agree” button without even bother to open the terms. A software had made an experiment to see if there is anyone who actually reads the terms. After three months and thousands of downloads, only one person read it to the end. (Deibert, 2019) After they get your consent, unknowingly, the companies start “to acquire as much data as possible about many customer as possible, ” (Deibert, 2019) and then, your data are sold to other companies, so the social media apps seem to be use for free, but actually you already paid through another, secretive way. This is “called the ‘personal-data surveillance economy’ or ‘surveillance capitalism’” (Deibert, 2019) that the company profit from stolen privacy.

After they sold the stolen data, your data will not be simply discarded, and instead, they feed it into their algorithms so that they can push the content you like to you. The more content you have seen, the algorithm knows better of you and will push more content to you, creating a positive loop, eventually, locking yourself in their app, so that the company can continuously profit from your personal data. However, the side effect, addiction, is borne by the user. The addiction caused by large amount of social media use is similar to addictions caused by drug uses, and the addicted people experience the same symptoms like anxiety and insomnia. (Deibert, 2019) Moreover, the mental impacts do not end here. In a recent research on teenagers’ feelings after spending significant amount of time in social media, the results showed that teenagers “often described feeling more anxious or depressed” (Reed, 2021). In the same research, the users of Instagram also reports that the app made them feel worse on their body image. John Palfrey, the professor of Law in Harvard University, claimed that using social media “can be extremely damaging” to teenagers (Palfrey, nd).

Furthermore, as social media acts as a highway of information, all kinds of information, including the bad ones, are spread instantly to vulnerable teenagers. In a recent research done by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that about 50% of the users have experienced hate speech online, which is harmful because “users who view hate speech on the internet experience negative mental health outcomes” (U.S. Government accountability Office, 2024). Furthermore, the percentage of users who reported experiencing discrimination from other users due to age, gender, ethnicity, or other characteristics has increased 8 percent over two years. (U.S. Government accountability Office, 2024, P38). What makes the situation even worse is that hate crimes, on average, occurs nearly every hour in the U.S., are fueled by online hate-filled postings on social media. (U.S. Government accountability Office, 2024)

In a democracy system, we all acknowledge that everyone’s voice matters, including minorities who can’t participate in election activities. The massive, unfiltered online speeches often includes manipulated information that misleads the public, especially teenagers. In a statistic done by Pew Research Center shows that a median of over 80% of the respondents have claimed that social media has made people easier to manipulate with malinformation and rumors. (Wike et al., 2022) The problem isn’t just coming out from people who send these information but also the social media platform itself. The algorithm can shape the users’ perspectives with selected aspects of the public while sidelining others. (Benkler, 2006) Facebook, for example, is owned by an individual, Zuckerberg, and it’s algorithm is reshaping public aspects such as hostility to immigration, to women and to sexual minorities. (Farrell, 2025)

However, there are people who believe that the connections between mental problem and social media are week, and they believe the total opposite side that social media helps to maintain a healthy mental status. This is reasonable, and I acknowledge this because a research on Netherlands indicated that over 90% of respondents have either a neutral or positive experience in terms of mental health (Lancaster, 2023). Moreover, social media provides a sense of belonging which “is a huge protective factor against suicide.” (Lancaster, 2023).

For teenagers, social media acts as no difference than cannabis, since both of them make people addicted to them, and both of them are bad for mental health. Leaving social media publicly, widely available is dangerous and harmful to teenagers, and thus, based on all these factors, I conclude that social media should be banned for people who are under age 19.

References

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-right-media-mindset/202302/

the-unintended-consequences-of-banning-social-media

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/11/canadian-government-to-ban-tiktok-the-company-not-the-app/

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/

the-road-to-digital-unfreedom-three-painful-truths-about-social-media/

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/is-it-time-to-swipe-left-on-social-media/

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/12/06/

social-media-seen-as-mostly-good-for-democracy-across-many-nations-but-u-s-is-a-major-outlier/

https://www.gao.gov/blog/online-extremism-growing-problem-whats-being-done-about-it