Assignment Three: Evaluation Essay For assignment three, you will be required to evaluate the facility you observed (it is up to you whether or not you would like to volunteer to get a better understa

In an article entitled Protecting Youth Mental Heath: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory by the Office of the Surgeon General, writes that “Depression, anxiety and suicidality have all sharply increased in adolescents over the past decade” (qtd. in Orben and Blakemore par. 1). In noting this increase, the Office of the Surgeon General emphases the urgancy of mental health as a crisis in our society today.

Social media has negatively impacted youth by making them reliant on feedback of others:

Social media provides new ways for adolescents to quantify social approval — for instance, through the number of ‘likes’ that they receive after posting something online, or by how many seconds, minutes or hours they have to wait before receiving feedback. For some people, being able to constantly track feedback from peers could heighten anxieties about self-worth or amplify the impact of judgements from peers. (Orben and Blakemore par. 15)

The authors point, therefore, is that individuals who do not receive instant gratification through ‘likes’ from followers could result in harmful consequences such as scewed perceptions of oneself and other’s opinions.

Precautions in the form of legislative content has been put in place in several countries around the world; however, the US has not instituted any bill protecting youth from the harmful affects of social media (Orben and Blakemore par. 20). A reform should be put in place that forces larger social media companies to acknowledge the impact they directly have on America’s youth.