Beware! The Negative Impact of the Insecurity Epidemic from Social Media

The report titled Digital 2021 The Latest Insights Into The State of Digital states that of Indonesia's 274.9 million inhabitants, 170 million already use social media. The age group with the most social media users is teenagers, commonly known as Generation Z. The most popular applications in frequent use are WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and various other applications that have become widespread recently.

Using social media does have both positive and negative impacts. One of the positive impacts is that it makes it easier to find new information. Meanwhile, one of the negative impacts of social media that has occurred recently is the emergence of insecurity in teenagers. Insecure means an action arising from emotion when we judge ourselves to be inferior to others (Asta, 2019). Feeling insecure makes a person feel unconfident and tend to often compare themselves with others.

To protect oneself from feeling insecure, it is necessary to know the causes that trigger the growth of feeling insecure. Insecurity can be triggered by internal factors such as past events that caused trauma. Dissatisfaction with one's own potential and laziness to hone that potential can also trigger insecurity. This can become a reason to compare oneself with people who are perceived as more perfect on social media.

Insecurity can also be caused by factors outside oneself. For example,  unfavourable judgements from other social media users can be a reason for a person to feel unconfident. This affects a person's mental health and causes them to avoid social activities in the real world, even though relationships with others in the real world are important.

In other cases, comparing oneself with others can trigger feelings of insecurity. Yet in the virtual world, what is presented is only a snippet of a person's life. This is certainly unfair because the judgement is based on a very narrow scale. To respond to this, a sense of self-love must be built so that one becomes more focused on developing one's own potential.

Feeling insecure is based on one's own view of others, judging as perfect what we see only briefly on social media. This often-underestimated matter turns out to have a very vital impact on life in the real world. The mental impact certainly greatly disturbs the mind and the social life in the real world, which also bears the consequences of the feeling of insecurity in others on social media.

Basically, insecurity comes from within oneself. So to keep that feeling under control, one must master one's mindset and have control over one's own feelings. Environmental factors can also support greater confidence and acceptance of the various shortcomings within us, starting from the narrowest environment in life, namely the family.

Instilling confidence will be optimal if it begins from an early age. Small things such as parents' awareness of appreciating their child's work and efforts will have a great impact on the child's confidence. As a result, the child will grow up with mature confidence and be able to accept their own shortcomings. This will make the child less likely to compare themselves with others.

Awareness of social media ethics, such as not leaving bad comments on others, not judging others easily, and not viewing things one-sidedly, will have a positive impact on oneself and others. This awareness must be instilled within us, so that we can begin to make changes for the sake of the mental health of ourselves and others.

http://m.harianmomentum.com/read/37895/harian-momentum-edisi-30-november-2021