Social Media and Middle School

Most kids get their first phone before they’ve reached grade 7.  Usually they get it for the ‘phone’ aspect of the device so they can let their parents or caregivers know that they’ve arrived at school safely or so that they can make arrangements for an after school pick up or a play date with a friend.  The cell phone used to be a communication device for safety but in today’s world, it has become so much more.

Today, it is rare to find a phone that is just a phone.  Kids are still using their devices for communication, no question, but they are using apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.  These apps allows kids to communicate visually with one another to share ideas and express emotions and from time-to-time, touch base with their parents or caregivers.  These platforms allow kids to highlight and share their successes, sense of humour, what they are doing during the day and allows them to form study groups which helps them at school.  If used properly, all of this sounds very positive…doesn’t it?

So why is it if you search the term ‘social media and self-esteem’ in Google, almost every article that comes up reports that self-esteem and self-worth diminish after spending time on social media? Studies show that many adolescents obsess over ‘likes’, ‘followers’, ‘re-tweets’. People tend to compare themselves and their life situations with one another.  They are preoccupied with their social status and whether or not others have seen their posts and what they are saying about them. How Facebook Can Amplify Low Self-Esteem/Narcissism/Anxiety, The Dangerous Relationship Between Social Media and Self-Worth, How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers. Students are not concentrating on their school work because their phones keep chiming and they are curious to see what is happening and who is trying to reach them.  They don’t want to miss a thing.

I have developed and provided workshops to adolescents and adults connecting body image to self-esteem and, by extension, self-esteem to social media.  Through conversations and written reports, I have discovered that although pre-teens and middle school aged children have a healthy and good understanding of social media, they are just beginning to exhibit mentally unhealthy habits. Twelve and thirteen year olds seem to be following healthy feeds and do not care significantly if they have a high number of followers or not.  It does not matter at all if they lose followers or not and they do not compare themselves to their friends.  But when asked why they post what they do the two main reasons were to 1) make others happy and 2) to make others jealous.

It seems that it is at this age that the tables are starting to turn.  Half of the subjects wrote that physical attractiveness plays moderately into how many social media ‘friends’ a person has and though they report that it does not matter to them how many friends they have, almost all when asked ‘Do you think that people with more followers/friends are happier people?’ they reported that they were ‘not sure’.   

If it is true that social media can turn into a negative, competitive and self-loathing experience, we need to reach kids at this age to help them remember to support their friends by pressing ‘like’ and leave positive comments to lift one another’s self-confidence.  It is important to remind them to surround themselves with people who make them smile, laugh and feel good too. This is the correct way to communicate using social media.


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