The Danger of Social Media Dependency

University student, debater, and speaker Aayush Rai delivered a talk on social media use for a TEDx event at the Mill Hill School in London, England, in which he discusses the potentially dangerous impact that it can have on the youth who develop addictions to it.

Rai introduces his talk by going over a few of the ways that social media has shaped his generation, and highlights just how frequently most people check their phones, and how this affects their thinking. Rai considers his own dependency as well, and shows the results of a tracker he implemented to see how long he was spending on each app. Next, he shows how this all relates to a decrease in attention spans, and how the instant gratification that social media can bring is highly addictive. As he explains, the algorithms used by major apps work to take advantage of this as well, so that they can make more money off of consumers. All together, this can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and poor sleep patterns.

With his talk on social media use, Rai shows how the consumption of the filtered lives others present can make people feel worse about themselves, and eventually build up irreversible harm. By speaking to these findings, he prompts his audience to think about their own social media addictions, and how curbing some of their use would positively impact them.