I love social media. I love TikTok and Instagram Reels. I love going to school and quoting the viral ‘Hyperpigmentation’ video with my friends. I love the endless stream of memes, the inside jokes only social media could create, and the way a single post can instantly connect millions of people.
What I don’t love is how I am the same as those millions of people. I don’t love that the choice between another hour of TikTok and studying is a hard one. I don’t love how social media has annihilated my, and many others, sense of self and ability to feel truly validated.
As a student at an “elite” private school, I witness my classmates struggle for academic validation every day. Students skip lunch to study, cry in the bathrooms before they even know what grade they got, and cram their schedules with as many extracurriculars as possible.
Students get so little sleep that the majority of the student body comes to school with some sort of caffeinated beverage. Burnout is expected, and overworking is almost glorified. At many high schools around New York City, the success of one’s high school career can often be summed up by the prestige of the college one ends up attending.
Snarky remarks are made about what an early decision to a “bad” college means: a horrific application or a weird applicant? The pressure to make college your whole world from the second you begin high school creates a mindset that plagues our every move.
But the road to academic success is hindered by social media. All these students who push their limits for academic validation are also struggling to find themselves.
The social pressure to prioritize your academics creates an environment where, if your grades aren’t the best they can be, your other needs are disregarded. If you’re feeling stressed about school but don’t have a great GPA, your stress is put on the back burner because you aren’t trying hard enough.
The incorrect notion that stress is only justified if your grades are good leads to bottling up your problems unless you have the “right” to talk about them. When you include the challenge of keeping your head in the game when social media companies are doing everything they can to loop you into spending hours mindlessly scrolling, the challenge of maintaining priorities becomes even harder.
With the increasing strategies social media companies take to encourage mindless scrolling and keep consumers on their apps, it gets harder to keep your head in the game. What is intended as a five-minute break to watch a TikTok quickly turns into an hour of absentmindedly browsing the endless videos curated by your ForYou page.
One’s identity becomes harder to define with social media telling you what to be. Fashion trends decide that high-rise jeans aren’t in and see girls all over the city wearing the same tops from mainstream brands. It doesn’t help when older generations fail to acknowledge that not following the herd is easier said than done.
As teenagers, we are all struggling to feel seen and validated, so not following trends is not necessarily seen as an option.
Additionally, social media has exacerbated teenage struggles with self-worth. We don’t just compare our grades to our peers anymore—a practice that leads to insecurity and resentment—we compare every aspect of our lives to curated online versions of other people.
I find myself checking the Instagram pages that post the colleges that students are going to attend in the fall, and end up comparing my current, freshman year extracurriculars to those of seniors. I spend hours making plans for the next three years to ensure my college application can be pristine, and then fail to focus on the current things that matter.
Obsession with other people’s lives on social media becomes not just about checking out someone’s highlight reel, but a belief system that other people have their lives put together while I’m struggling to start my homework.
I open Instagram and see yet another senior at my school getting accepted to an Ivy League, an influencer making their academic routine look effortless, or a classmate on a glamorous vacation. Suddenly, my accomplishments feel small, my stress feels invalid, and my life feels lacking.
The way social media pushes us to present our best selves online leads to pressure to present ourselves as we are on social media everywhere else. School has turned into a place where I feel that I must put on a façade to seem perfect.
I’m constantly feeling that my life will not be complete until I get an acceptance letter to my dream college, even though that can’t possibly happen until senior year. But attempts to have a perfect life never feel like enough. There is always someone who looks happier, has fun without sacrificing their grades, and someone who has their life all figured out. By comparing myself to others, I’m slowly losing sight of myself and trying to mold myself into someone I’m not.
The stresses of trying to gain a sense of academic validation and social acceptance can often translate into mental health struggles. These struggles, once acknowledged as real and deeply personal, are now dismissed as trends.
The rise of conversations surrounding depression, burnout, and anxiety should have allowed for more awareness and understanding about such feelings, but has instead led to frequent invalidation. I often find myself feeling like I can’t talk about mental struggles for fear of being accused of exaggerating for attention or simply parroting what I see on social media.
The ability to openly discuss mental health should be a positive development, but it has instead created an atmosphere where suffering is met with skepticism unless it is severe enough to be deemed real. The ideology that teenagers’ feelings should be accepted without causing them to feel alienated isn’t a woke ideology that aims to coddle teens, but a necessity if we want the future generation to feel that they don’t have to resort to extreme measures to feel seen.
I hate social media—not because it exists, but because of what it has done to the way we understand ourselves and each other. We are more connected than ever—yet many of us have never felt more alone.
A 9th-grader at Trinity School in Manhattan, Veronika Hunt aspires to be a lawyer and the President of the United States.