story wall

"i feel like social media can be positive, but those positives are often outweighed by the negatives, such as unwanted pestering in dm's, rude comments, etc."- Anonymous (15)

"I use social media to post and see what my friends are up to. It also makes it EXTREMELY addicting. I procrastinate with my homework from this. Scrolling for hours feels like an endless loop. I also feel I always compare myself to other girls on social media platforms. A way I cope with these issues includes limiting as much time as possible on these apps." - Maddie (17)

"Mainly used a platform where I can browse what is offered. Sometimes it is used as a coping mechanism to clear my head when too much stuff is going on." - Anonymous (18)

"i find myself in an endless loop of scrolling so often and it distracts me and prevents me from getting so much done. i am actively struggling to cope with this." - Anonymous (15)

"I downloaded instagram when I was in 4th grade because it was “cool” and I would be “popular”. Same with Snapchat in 5th grade, and tik tok in 6th. But what determines if someone is cool and popular? Is it the way they look, the way they act, or the things they have? I thought social media would answer these questions for me, but little did I know it changed my life for the worst. Now I feel pressured to look good in every picture I post, and I have to be careful about what I post because of how people will view me. Will they think I’m weird or stupid? Or maybe they’ll think I’m pretty. But how would I know how someone actually views me, if it always and only depends on social media. Am I cool? Am I popular?"- Isabella (15)

"As a black girl I can go to social media platforms for ideas about new hair styles or outfits, and I can also look at cool new spots to try new foods or cute shops. But a big issue is the body image movement, and how every two seconds it's showing me how to get a flat stomach or that bigger is beautiful or that this is what happened to one chick when she starved herself. Its a huge mess. Another issue is all the couples that everyone looks up to, and how it sparks emotions in others causing them to act bitter bc they feel alone/not worthy. I think something that should be reinforced heavily is that social media is a glamorized version of ppl's actual lives" - Anonymous (16)

"i really love social media. i mean what can i say--i'm essentially an influencer. and as an influencer, i experience a lot of hate. and hate comments can really get to me sometimes, and are detrimental to my mental health. though social media can be good, it can be so, so bad, and it's getting to the point that i'm considering stopping instagram, and ending my influencer era."- Eliza (23)

"I use social media to escape. I often find it as a great way to rest my mind after a long day at school or a lot of homework. Scrolling through TikTok consumes most of my time on social media." - Gabriel (14)

"I don’t really have social media unless you count YouTube and Discord but based off of what I have used here’s what I’ll say. For me, social media has typically served as a distraction in general but it has also served as an informative and positive resource. There’s been plenty of times where it’s served as a negative resource in the sense that it being a distraction serves me as a procrastination tool and just negativity being displayed on YouTube and stuff. Social media has also served me in a positive light through being informative and also having positivity displayed. A problem that I have is that it isn’t very hard for me to get distracted so YouTube and discord are like always keeping me entertained to the point where I’ll be pretty unproductive at times. I guess one solution I’ve been using to navigate social media is being able to stop myself for a time and try to focus on something else." - Juan (16)

"When I’m up late at night in my phone I want to stop scrolling because I’m exhausted so I just tell myself that it will be there tomorrow and I’m not missing out on anything. However, then I get worried that then my algorithm will get messed up because I scrolled out of something so it thinks I’m disengaged. When this happens even though it’s not the best solution normally I just scroll until I get an ad." - Tallulah (16)