According To Scientific Study, Instagram And Snapchat Tops The List For Mental Health Issues

Time and again experts have warned us about the ill effects of the overuse of social media. The trauma, the mental stability and the nervousness that follows with each post and checking phones for any new notifications is taking the life of today’s youth into the abyss. 

Portraying the idea of a perfect life, and options to tag places you visit, social media has now officially become the reasons for mental illness. Topping the list are the Instagram and Snapchat. And with latest data coming in, it’s just tends to get serious. Royal Society of Public Health and Young Health Movement in their report #StateOfMind gave the five most popular social networks net average scores based on the ratings given by youngsters. The results show that the most popular social media networks are the ones doing our mental health the most harm.

In the list, Instagram topped the list, followed by Snapchat. YouTube happened to be the only social website which doen’t had any negative impact on people. According to the research, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram – four of the five most used platforms- worsened social anxiety for their users. Judging by the way anxiety and depression has increased by 70%, there are chances that we’re entering a future where one out of six might experience anxiety and depression at least once in their lives.

Mashable quotes Shirley Cramer CBE — chief executive of RSPH,

“It’s interesting to see Instagram and Snapchat ranking as the worst for mental health and wellbeing – both platforms are very image-focused and it appears they may be driving feelings of inadequacy and anxiety in young people.”

 This is further backed by Laci Green, a health YouTuber with 1.5 million subscribers, who agrees that social media has dramatically shifted how people socialise, communicate, and form relationships. She says, “Because platforms like Instagram and Facebook present highly curated versions of the people we know and the world around us, it is easy for our perspective of reality to become distorted.”

In the hope of making things better for the social media junkies that we’ve become, RSPH is calling on social media platforms to mark digitally manipulated images. The organisation is also putting forth that a pop-up, warning heavy usage, should be introduced.