The impact of social media on adolescent mental health

On the 22nd of November, 2015, a teenage girl living in South-Eastern Russia, Rina Palenkova, posted a seemingly normal selfie with the caption “Nya bye”. The next day, she took her life. December 25, 2015, a 12 year old girl from the city Ryazan in Russia, Angelina Davydova, took her life. Around 2 weeks later another teenage girl from that same city, Diana Kuznetsova, also committed suicide. Upon their parents examining their devices, they found online groups that their daughters seemed to have been a part of. The death of Rina Palenkova was discussed a considerable amount in the groups and there were several mentions of blue whales.

Contents

The Blue Whale Challenge Link between social media & mental health Tips to reduce social media usage Conclusion Bibliography

The Blue Whale Challenge

Between the years 2015 to 2017 teenagers were continuously taking their lives in around 24 different countries worldwide due to the so-called blue whale challenge. This blue whale challenge is said to be a sort of game in which the curators send sets of instructions and tasks for the teens to do in the span of 50 days, and by day 50 they would be tasked with taking their own lives.

The blue whale challenge appeared to have originated on VK, short for Vkontakte, which is a Russian social media site with about 84.7 million monthly users as of 2023. The name was given to the challenge because of the phenomenon that blue whales allegedly take their own lives by washing up on shores. This challenge is found through social networks where a user makes a post on their page asking to join the game. The curators will then send them a link with an app, and supposedly once you’ve downloaded this app you cannot delete it. Once you’ve downloaded the app it starts taking in your data and giving your personal information to the curators. The curators then store all this personal info of yours for later use.

The instructions on the challenge is as follows,

Day 1: Carve F57 on your hand with a razor then send a picture to the curator.

Day 2: Wake up at 4:20am and watch the psychedelic and scary videos that the curator sent.

Day 3: Cut your arm with a razor along your veins and send a picture to the curator.

Day 4: Draw a whale on paper and send a picture of it to the curator.

Day 5: If you are ready to become a whale carve yes on your leg, if not cut yourself several times as punishment.

Day 6: You are tasked with a secret message written in code.

Day 7: Carve F40 on hand and send a picture.

Day 8: Write a status online about being a whale.

Day 9: Overcome a fear

Day 10: Wake up at 4:20am and go up to the roof.

The tasks go on like this with a bit of variation but mostly they are all similar types of tasks. By the 20th day the curator checks to see if you are trustworthy, you are basically supposed to prove your loyalty at this stage.

Day 21: Talk with a “whale”(another player) through skype.

Day 22: Go to the roof and sit with your legs dangling on the edge.

Day 23: You are given a secret task.

Day 24: Another secret task.

Day 25: You are to meet with a “whale”

Day 26: The curator tells you the date of your death and you have no choice but to accept it.

Day 27: Wake up at 4:20am and visit a railroad.

Day 28: Don’t talk to anyone all day.

Day 29: Make a vow that you are a whale.

At this point it feels to the teens as though they are at a psychological no return zone. They now feel completely obligated to continue with the tasks and even if they feel as though they want to stop, the curators will use their personal information to blackmail and threaten them to continue.

After the 30th day, they make them repeat the same tasks over and over everyday until day 50 which they are then instructed to take their own lives. (Gisle, D., 2017)

The excessive use of social media has been linked to the increase in mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression in various studies throughout the years. The rates of depression have been shown to have increased by 12% for girls and 3.7% for boys between the years 2009 to 2019.

Users that are shown to have a social media addiction or at risk of it have reported feeling more depressed and having a lower self-esteem. Using social media appears to be connected to body image issues, increase in the risk of cyberbullying, addictions, negatively affecting everyday moods, a feeling of loneliness and a fear of missing out. It has also shown to have decreased the overall wellbeing and life satisfaction of many individuals.

Social media makes extremely harmful and inappropriate content easily accessible to anyone including teens and young children. Young children seeing these harmful contents over and over again in a way normalizes it in their brains and leads to thoughts of self harm and sometimes even suicide. Eating disorders have also been a major issue, especially among young teen girls, with the increased amount of social media usage. The social media algorithm shows you things that you may be interested in, perhaps you clicked on it once, because of that one click, it now shows you those sorts of posts over and over. This ties in with how teens see unattainable beauty standards all over their feed constantly. This in turn leads to self image issues all the way down to an almost inevitable eating disorder and low self-esteem.

Furthermore, many people use social media as a way of exploiting young and impressionable teens for sexual or financial gain. There was a recent case, 2024, in which a 17 year old boy, Jordan DeMay, from Michigan, USA, took his own life because of a sextortion scam. 2 brothers, the Ogoshi brothers, from Nigeria messaged Jordan through Instagram pretending to be a girl his age. They coerced him into sending explicit images, then went out of their way to find the boys school, friends and family online. With this info they then blackmailed Jordan into giving them thousands of dollars, threatening to release the explicit images to his friends and family if he didn’t comply. Jordan sent as much money as he could then told the scammers that he would kill himself if they released the pictures, and they told him to go ahead and do so if not they will make him. His father found him dead in his bedroom just a couple hours after his interaction with the scammers.(Tidy, J., 2024)

There are many cases similar to this in which strangers reach out to young teens and use their vulnerabilities in a way that makes the teens feel seen or wanted, they then turn back on the teens and blackmail them for a variety of different reasons. This leads to many cases of self harm and sometimes even suicide.

It is very important to reduce one’s social media usage and to regulate the amount of social media their teens and children consume. There are many ways to go about this.

You can 1st start by setting time limits on social media apps, this can be done through the settings in your device.
Set specific times in the day in which you and your family can use social media.
Go through the list of people and pages you follow on social media and just unfollow the ones that make you feel bad about yourself, and tell your kids to do the same.

Now with all the free time you have that was once consumed with social media, a lot of people might start to feel bored and that can easily make them break the good habit of less social media usage that they’re trying to create. In this stage you should go and find things to do outside of social media. You can pick up reading, a sport perhaps, plan weekly or daily family outings, whichever works best for you, go to different parks, the lake, the beach, ride a bike, plan an outing with friends. Help your teens join a social activity or a solo one, maybe they can start playing an instrument, painting classes, standup comedy, anything that may catch their interest.

Conclusion

Social media isn’t an inherently bad thing, it is usually the excess and unregulated use of it that causes all these bad and horrible things to happen. Social media was designed in a way to make its users get addicted and stay on the apps as long as possible, so it is important that we become more aware of our usage and set limits for ourselves and our children to protect from the harmful effects that it may cause. Many benefits have come from the rise of social platforms all around the world. A lot of teens feel more accepted and take pride in being part of a community, they get connected to so many different people from all around the globe and that includes good and very positively influential people. Social media also helps spread awareness about so many things that might’ve gone unnoticed and ignored. It starts fights and unnecessary discourse as well as brings people together.

So many good things have happened and will continue to happen because of social media, so to say everyone should completely stop using it and ban their children from it is quite counterintuitive. We just need to check ourselves more often, and parents should help regulate and reduce the amount of social media their children consume without complete restriction. Talk to your kids and get them help if they need it because the effects of social media could be quite detrimental on their mental well being. If all goes well, social media will be affecting you and your families in only the best of ways. It is important to continue to stay aware as social media and technology is a very fast paced and continuously growing wonder that can very well be used to our advantage if armed with the proper knowledge and caution.