Check out this article on the correlation between social media and teenage depression:https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/social-media-and-teen-depression-two-go-hand
Do you think social media is a curse or a blessing on today's youth? Is there a way to help people better achieved a balance between online connection and face-face social skills?
I think there is no question that social media provides unprecedented benefits to today's youth, in terms of its breadth of information available for the curious. But at the same time, as the article points out, there are negative aspects to consider as well, which include a correlation with teenage depression. Based on my personal experience, I think such depression from social media is primarily based on self-comparisons. So if one is busy studying at home, and sees their friends having fun on Snapchat, then there is a feeling of doubt, a feeling of loneliness of being left out (even if one chose to study and denied a night out). Or in the alternative case that there is an individual isolated in their school or community, then seeing others' constructed projections on social media (**the idea that what we see on social media is the superficial/artificial creation of perfect images that people make...we don't really know how sad their lives are**) may incite depression as a result of comparing with what appears to be the worse state of his or her own life. In this way, there is a paradox of online connection, in that it provides mediums of both happiness and depression. Given that I find this to be the primary problem, I don't think the question is a balance of online connection and face-face social skills. I think that it is more so a question of how we help every teenager see the truth of social media. That social media is merely artificial projections of "perfect selves" and that "happiness" is more than mere superficial feelings of self worth that people nowadays construct via such projections.