Based on a research conducted by Oberlo, there are 3.2 billion users on social media! Which approximately equates to 42% of the population, we’re close to the 50%! Can you imagine how huge this number is?! It’s the fastest-growing online activity that ever took place in history... A huge reason behind this growing market is the availability of smartphones to everyone, from all the categories, and in a different budget ranges; it makes it easier for people to access their favourite social media pages on the go! Facebook has still been ruling among all the social media platforms, following it comes Instagram which now became the most-used social media platform for the young ages, and here comes the problem we will discuss today!
Here are some Instagram usage statistics that you should know about…
1.1 billion people use Instagram every month, 500 million of them use the platform daily!
71% of Instagram users around the globe are under the age of 35, ranging from 16-34.
72% of U.S teens use Instagram… It became the top platform for teenagers.
35% of online adults use Instagram.
34% of Instagram users are millennials
22% of all Instagram users log in at least once a day
38% of users check Instagram multiple times a day
25% of smartphone owners use Instagram
As you can see with the above numbers, the percentage of people using Instagram is huge and for marketers, it’s a great platform to increase the business sales, but as you see it’s the most-often used platform by the young ages and that’s what we’re going to talk about today… How badly this platform affects these young people’s mental health.
The Royal Society for Public Health and Young Health Movement have conducted a research on how Instagram has became the worst social media platform on mental health, with snapchat coming in second place following it. This research has been conducted on about 1500 youth from the young ages of 14-24 years old, they were asked to rate the famous social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Youtube) from a scale of 1-5, 1 least harmful and 5 most harmful. Among these platforms, Instagram was rated the most harmful in regards to quality of sleep, anxiety, body image, and fear of missing out!
If anyone uses Instagram they would know why it makes people of this ages insecure, simply because it shows off the lives of the influencers as bright as it could ever be, how they look absolutely gorgeous in every way possible, how their homes look like the dream houses of everyone, how they never miss anything out (events, celebrations...etc), and how they travel the world with nothing to worry about! That’s what Instagram shows, and that’s exactly why people get depressed when they think of their lives in comparison to others!
Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH (Royal Society for Public Health) has highlighted something very important when she said “Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, and is now so entrenched in the lives of young people that is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people’s mental health issues”. Parents should definitely take care of this issue nowadays, it’s become an equally important addiction problem as drugs and alcohol.
Summing all what we’ve mentioned today up, social media has become a big addiction to the young age, and some platforms are affecting their mental health in a very bad manner. Parents need to start supervising their children’s activity on social media, and supervise their social activity as well, they need to make sure that they’re not facing a psychological issue because of what they see everyday on the social media platforms they use!
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