While the invention of social media was intended to keep people in touch in other ways than simple messaging, it has become a glorified and more accessible “Burn Book”. 

Remember Mean Girls, the overdramatized and satirical, yet accurate, film based on the clique-centric nature of high school. In a segment of the movie, the disrespectful Plastics, or “popular” girls, created an anonymous book detailing all their vulgar opinions of their classmates. This book was named the Burn Book.

This movie came out in 2004, prior to the rise of social media. If the same film were made today, these unfiltered and mean-spirited views would be expressed through comments on social media platforms rather than in a book. Just like the Burn Book, social media is largely fueled by anonymity, so the importance — and guilt — of the words being expressed are often masked by a nameless writer. 

Celebrities are now scrutinized for their bodies not looking the same as they did when they were teenagers. Politicians are now losing their credibility due to foolish comments posted on the internet. Fake news is spread through corrupt Instagram accounts. Our society has become split due to the lack of accountability needed to post on social media.

Social media is something that practically every teenager now uses. Snapchat, for example, is the new phone number. If a teenager is interested in someone, it is no longer customary to ask for a phone number but instead for a Snapchat username. The app is quite literally sending pictures back and forth with occasional text, leading teenagers to believe that everyone must always be in constant contact and know exactly where and what others around them are doing. It becomes almost a nervous habit to fill the time. With every spare moment I have, I find myself checking Snapchat. It is precisely the idea of instant gratification that keeps teenagers intrigued and, increasingly, hooked. 

Snapchat and other forms of social media have become a time-consuming addiction where users judged and degraded for the number of their Snap score and how much they post on Instagram. With something so integrated into society, one would think that the negative stigma would eventually go away, but it hasn’t. This is because social media either brings out the fake versions of people or their uncensored thoughts — neither of which is what anyone needs to be consuming every day.

With easily accessible forms of bullying and media being outwardly negative toward each other, children are growing up to believe that bullying over the internet is forgivable and normal. The right example is not being set by those on social media today.

And as long as users can hide behind the veil of anonymity, I am fearful that the impact of social media on our lives will only worsen with time.