How to be Smart on Social Media
Safety and Social Media
Online spaces now touch every part of our lives, from education to shopping and entertainment, and, of course, our social lives. But what makes the negative effects of social media more dangerous than normal internet use? Here are three reasons why you should take care when it comes to your e-safety.
The Dangers of Social Media
1. Privacy & Exposure Risks
Social media encourages over sharing of personal information such as photos and locations, making teens more vulnerable to privacy breaches, cyberbullying, and online predators. Unlike general internet usage, social media interactions are often public and easily misused because they are so personal.
2. Mental Health & Peer Pressure
The curated content and constant peer interactions on social media can lead to harmful comparisons, fear of missing out (FOMO), and low self-esteem. Teens are also more susceptible to peer pressure, risky trends, and exposure to harmful content.
3. Addiction & Time Consumption
Social media platforms are designed to maximise engagement through endless scrolling, notifications, and real-time feedback. This leads to excessive screen time, which can interfere with sleep, academics, and offline relationships, unlike task-oriented general internet usage. It’s also a fact that teenagers’ brains are still growing, and areas that control reason and judgement are not fully formed yet, which means it can be easier to pick up bad habits which could be with you for a long time.
Social Media and Mental Health
Excessive use of social media has been shown to contribute to feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and depression. Teens may compare their lives unfavourably to curated and filtered online personas, leading to low self-esteem. Passive consumption, like scrolling without interaction, has been linked to unhappiness.
Clean Your Feed
Cleaning your social media feed is a great place to start. Your mobile device is designed to present you with an endless stream of stories and content it thinks you are interested in. While it is important to stay informed, too much of one type of content can leave you feeling exhausted, and create a bubble of information which is presented to you as the norm.
Don’t be Passive
It is easy to passively accept everything that comes into your timeline because a single swipe can bring up the next item, but it could be more of the same.
Take positive action by blocking or removing things from your feed which you know are affecting your mental health. This can be hard to do because you have to remain aware of how your mood and thoughts change as you consume different content.
One tip is to disconnect completely, or as much as you can, for a couple of days. Delete the Apps, turn off the WiFi, and leave your phone behind, when possible. Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions over this time. When you get online again, how do you feel about the content you see? This can help you identify the difference between stories you have a real interest in, and ‘doomscrolling’.
It’s not a Popularity Contest
Apps love to show big numbers like followers, likes, shares, and similar, and ‘going viral’ is often considered something to aim for. Firstly, don’t be fooled by the numbers. For a start, many of them are fake! Bots are widely used to inflate these counts, and anyone can buy 100,000 followers for the right price. Secondly, numbers don’t translate into anything like a meaningful relationship—they are just numbers. Third, not all of those followers are fans. Some just clicked the ‘follow’ button once and gave it no more thought (another reason to clean your feed), and some are hate-following, just so they can complain and bully.
Look at it this way: Would you rather have a million people around the world labelled ‘friend’, or ten people you can really count on in your life?
Manage your Connections
Have you heard of the idea of six degrees of separation?This is the theory that everyone is interconnected through no more than six steps.
Your social network is always bigger than you think. It starts with everyone you are connected to but includes all of their connections, and then all of their connections, too, and so on. This means you might be closely connected to people you don’t want to be without knowing.
You can control this by working through your contact lists. Who really needs to be there? Who is there just because they added you one day, and you agreed? Pruning your contacts will go some way toward protecting yourself because it will limit the visibility of your content, and keep you from seeing other content you might want to avoid. This is just the first step, though. See the section on privacy and security below for more information.
Be Mindful of What You Share
Privacy settings can only do so much. Once you hit that button to send your thoughts out to the world, you have shared with everyone you know. You might also have shared it with everyone they know, too. Once an image, message or voice recording has been sent, it is out of your control. Be careful what you share and with whom.
That goes for private chats as well as public posts—perhaps more so because it is easy to forget that just because the conversation is between two people, it will always stay that way.
Don’t be quick to answer questions from strangers, no matter how interested they seem, or how persuasive they might be.
Your greatest power is the ability to say no and to keep things to yourself.
Understand your Privacy and Security Settings
Privacy: Many social networks and apps like to make you and your content as easy to find as possible. This can be helpful, but it can expose you unnecessarily. Take the time to look through your apps and check the privacy settings. You might be giving away more than you think. Look at your phone’s location settings too, and check that your location is only being revealed to apps and websites when you want. It’s easy to turn privacy features off and reveal more than you want to.
You can delete content too, so check your post history and remove or update the visibility of anything you don’t want to be made public.
Usernames: Avoid using personal information in any username or account information. Star signs, months, year of birth, or town names can all be used to identify you. Take a few minutes to Google yourself and your usernames. If you have the same or similar usernames across multiple platforms, you can make it possible for people to track you from one app to another without realising it.
Passwords: How good are your passwords, really? The best passwords are long combinations of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, and are always unique. Using the same password on your Insta and your TikTok is asking for trouble, especially if you share usernames across platforms too. Consider using a password manager for extra protection (with a very strong password on it!) or create a system for yourself which makes long passwords easy to remember. Is this inconvenient? Yes it is! Are those extra few seconds to log in to something worth it? Absolutely. If you have ever had an account compromised, you will know this is worth the hassle. Don’t learn the value of good security the hard way!
Beware of Ads and Scammers
Don’t believe everything you see. Glamorous lifestyles can be rented and borrowed for photoshoots, and extravagant wealth is often an illusion. Influencer content is often sponsored, whether they reveal this or not. Many popular influencers and streamers are part of a big business working hard to monetise their popularity any way they can. The illusion of success can easily be bought.
Social media is full of scams that have been around for decades. There is nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes, and fake reviews, misleading advertising, and falsified results have been around forever. Ads are not always clearly identified as such. The UK has developed a world of consumer protection laws to protect consumers, but they can only do so much, and their reach is limited when influencers can be based anywhere in the world.
New AI tools have only made this problem worse, and it is now easier than ever to create entirely fake but believable people, voices, text, and scenes.
Beware of anything being sold. Be alert to high-pressure sales tactics. Scammers love to use prices that seem unreal, fake reviews (sometimes from real accounts, which makes them harder to spot), and time-pressure tactics like ‘low stock’ or ‘prices will go up soon’. Educate yourself on scammy practices with the Government’s Rip-off Tip-off campaign.
If something seems too good to be true online, it almost always is. In the end, your choices are your responsibility. Caveat emptor, or buyer beware!
Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help
Social media platforms have improved their privacy tools over the years, but the control is in your hands. You just need to be willing to use it. Don’t be afraid to hit that block button, or to report someone using the tools in your app.
You can speak to a close friend if you want a second opinion. You can also speak to a trusted adult if you need to. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it. Unfortunately, social media is filled with bullies, scammers, and more, looking for opportunities.
It’s Not All Bad!
Life online has its dangers, but so do many other things. This article has been written so you can stay safe online and enjoy the benefits of friendship, communication, community, and support. Have fun, be sensible, and don’t forget to disengage from time to time. The world is much bigger than your phone.
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