Social media can be used for many things such as connecting with others and advertising your business. However, many people don’t use social media just for the positive aspects of it.

Many people use social media to follow others, do trends and challenges, or even make fun of other people and pressuring others to do things such as drugs and other illegal activities. Social media can harm people mentally if it is used in a bad way.

“For instance, in one study, 75% of the kids accepted the fact that the pressure to blend in after seeing posts of their friends openly drinking alcohol and taking drugs forced them to repeat this behavior,” from the article Peer Pressure and Teens: Social Media is the Culprit.

Social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat often contain people who cyber-bully. Although many images or videos are of memes, selfies, friends or family, teens have recently taken to posting embarrassing pictures and videos of others.

On Instagram and TikTok, there are viral challenges such as dancing, singing, and other things. Some of the challenges are specifically created to convince people to hurt themselves. For example, the “Nillu Nillu” challenge, where it challenged people to jump in front of moving vehicles, or the “Momo” challenge which is a suicide challenge that was created to incite fear. Even though there was no evidence that anyone even participated, these challenges are still harmful.

“Several areas of the brain make teens more sensitive to the neurochemical rewards of peer acceptance and approval, resulting in a strong desire to impress friends and an increased willingness to take risks by performing risky and “exciting” behaviors,” from child safety expert Dr. Free N. Hess.

Something to consider before signing up for social media is that you are giving your personal information to a company. Some companies let you have the option whether or not you want your information public or not, while others don’t. Not all companies keep your information secure; Facebook was caught a couple of years ago giving people’s information to other organizations.

“Most of the time when I sign up for social media like SnapChat or Instagram I over look the privacy and security section,” said a former student known as JD.

Social media also uses peoples information to create advertisements that would be appealing in their eyes. Instagram and other social media networks let you choose the type of advertisement that you would like to see or not.

Another thing to consider when you have social media is if that person you are talking to really is who they said they are, they can be cat-fishing you. A catfish is someone that pretends to be someone they are not. They could be adults on social media who catfish young teens to meeting up with them.

They are plenty of dangers in real life and online. When you download social media, you never know what you are really signing up for.