Moms will blame their kids’ headaches on their phone usage while reading the Facebook post that reminded them to go nag at their kids. Typically, the essential question remaining from that conversation is, “What is it that you’re watching on your phone?”
I guarantee that adults are unaware of what content their children are consuming a majority of the time, and as far as they are concerned, this generation is only becoming more brainwashed with the heightened use of social media.
Whether someone is a silent viewer or posts Threads daily, they are a consumer of social media. Some might say “victim” of consumption, but I beg to differ. Teenagers and young adults consume a mixture of content ranging from politics to new slangs which kids these days mislabel as “brain rot.”
However, the irksome “brain rot” slang generally used by students in classrooms is only a fragment of the content they consume. A research study displays that 47% out of the 70% of college students who have Instagram utilize the app as a resource for information about colleges they may want to apply to. Another recent survey from Pew Research Center shows that 53% of U.S. adults attain news from social media as of 2025.
Evidently, social media is not only a source of entertainment, but it is also a source for research and knowledge.
Moreover, if Instagram is used and known as a reliable source of information to over half of the surveyed students and adults, then envision how it and other social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube may expose people to topics online that haven’t been sufficiently covered elsewhere in news outlets.
On the contrary, a sophomore at Sage Creek High School, Italy Lezama Garcia, believes that social media can well inform a person in addition to having noticeable downsides to their mental health. Having been questioned about her internet consumption, Garcia listed various societal changes she wouldn’t have known prior to downloading TikTok. She specified one of the changes social media has given exposure to is the ICE raids that have been taking place in the U.S., which helps emphasize the heavy impacts it has brought upon citizens of today’s society.
After building a strong defense for it, Garcia unraveled the drawbacks regarding how different her and her peers would be without social media.
“Over time, if I had got rid of social media, it could probably, like, cause more of a positive effect than a negative effect on me,” she said, “I would be more focused on my hobbies and academics.”
Similarly, sophomore student Charlotte Lee had a perspective akin to Garcia’s on important life connections except with a more social approach. Lee said, “if people didn’t have social media, there would be less bullying or less arguments and we’d be less divided.”
Despite the contrast, Lee also identifies the influential power social media carries in people’s everyday viewpoints. She claimed that although most of the controversial topics like politics and religion don’t generally apply to herself, they are very important in other people’s lives as they shape their opinions and their beliefs.
The fact is that people do not have to have social media to be able to recognize that it can influence the ways in which others expand their knowledge on a subject. It shouldn’t be difficult to allow others to simply consume and or express thoughts they resonate with online as an outlet from opposing thoughts that may surround them in their physical life.
Having listened to Garcia and Lee about their personal lens on social media, it would be difficult not to sympathize with their takes on the internet distancing personal and social human relationships. Which then, could influence chronic social media consumers, including myself, to have mixed feelings about consumption.
Nevertheless, both students conveyed different outlooks on consumption, revealing that people do not have to use social media so often to the extent where it is considered unhealthy. However, when they are intentional with their time on social media, it can benefit them.
Professionals like Kathryn Macapagal, a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, says, “Saying social media is universally bad for youth is wrong and erases the good examples of what it could do for youth who are historically excluded, marginalized, or lack access to peers.”
If people are able to acknowledge the powerful purposes of social media like Macapagal, then people will be able to consume an endless universe of information and form their own beliefs freely. I find that that aspect far outweighs someone not having their own opinions or being ignorant to new developments in the world.
With that being said, when it comes to research or diving deeper into individuality on social media, people do not always have to listen to the caring tone of their mother’s nagging.
