Social media, whether we want it or not, has blown up. Now if it’s a good influence or a distraction on the teenage mind, now thats a debate. There seems to always be a split between both opinions.

Social media has the biggest influence on young adults right now. With all that is presented on platforms such as “Facebook” or “Twitter”, there is no stopping what teens could accomplish. You can now reach millions of people with one click. All of that power at the fingertips of a 16-year-old must have it’s ups and downs right? Too much of anything is bad and social media has proven that.

Social media does help people get places they’d never think they would. For example, Youtube. Youtube has had a huge boom since it’s early days. According to studies done by ‘Omnicoreagency.com,’ the number of daily users is more than 30 million and there are 5 billion videos watched per day. Youtube has made its environment so that people can easily upload content and get their message across. There are different communities e.g. the beauty community. Peoples channels blow up that way. Take Daisy Marquez. She uploaded her first video in 2016 and now has over 900,000 subscribers and almost over 50,000,000 views in total. “I love to watch her because she makes me feel better and when I need inspiration for a look, I can watch her videos,” Cynthia Chavez,16, said.

On the other hand, platforms like Facebook and Twitter let people say what they want when they want. They are often influenced by the actual media that is published on the platforms. Plenty of those perfect couples and ideal expectations are set. “Once you get on social media, it makes you want to be in a relationship’ Junior Joie Robledo said. Relationships are all on social media nowadays. A certain standard is put in place and now teens everywhere struggle to get to that standard. What a lot of teenagers don’t understand is that a relationship will never be perfect, but in order to get the “likes,” almost everyone will put on a fake face.

On a lighter note, plenty of memes are distributed daily about current events. Teens make them in order to be relatable and/or funny. Yes, memes do make us all have a good laugh but lately, mental illnesses have become memes. They joke about depression and suicide. These have become very appealing to teens because people are scared to talk about mental illness seriously so they turn it into a joke. “(Memes) make me feel better about myself because I can relate and I know I’m not alone.” said Johnah Grant, a sophomore at North. Topics such as anxiety and PTSD aren’t to be joked about. “Depression should be an actual thing and not be made fun of anymore because now its become “in order to be cool you have to have anxiety/depression,” Edwin Pleitez said.

So why is social media so appealing to teens? “You gain awareness, some knowledge, you get to know a lot of different things but also (young adults) get to experience a lot of power.” said Andrew Kelderman, a chemistry teacher at North. So is it okay to joke about mental illness? Does social media offer too much power? Either way, the internet continues to rule this generation.