We have written articles about the effects of Social Media in previous posts, and this article from the Telegraph bears out the issues. According to research from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) the number of girls unhappy with their appearance doubles by the time they reach 14 years of age due to “heavy social media use”. This reason alone negatively impacts young peoples’ wellbeing and self-esteem, independently of whether their mental health was good or bad before this. When this is combined with a lack of regular physical exercise, which plays a very positive role in young people’s wellbeing, then the picture is one of great concern. Due to other social pressures, girls experience more depressive symptoms, such as hopelessness, and this feeling increases at the end of their teenage years, whilst depressive symptoms increase markedly. If no intervention or support is given at this stage it can go on to cause harm and severe mental health issues. While not easy to address these challenges children should be encouraged to do some form of physical exercise and be taught more about the symptoms of mental health: how to detect these and try and address them. It should be on the curriculum of all schools and be a part of government campaigns. Only in this way will we start to address this head-on.
