Adolescence is a Time of Storm and Stress Amidst Social Media

Factors Influencing Adolescent Ego-Centricity

Another factor is the adolescent’s achievements in life, school, or work. For example, someone that’s a captain of a team or is the president of the student senate, or a manager tends to be more egocentric, making it difficult to connect or work with others; the primary reason for this is that they lack empathy, and are unable to understand other’s needs other than their own. And lastly, I believe all of us fuel our own egos through past experiences.

Things happen, and sometimes those positive and negative experiences trigger our ego.

Influence of Social Media on Adolescent Ego

During adolescence, we have a lot of pressure coming from social media, making us more sensitive to every little comment about our appearance. Most TV commercials and social media show an unrealistic standard of what is defined as beauty; these standards are not only set by the celebrities we admire, but my friends and others around us, and because of this, we are vulnerable to mentally enslaving ourselves to others. Social media can be a sweet evil that can build you or destroy you. It can add negative things to our insecurities. People only post the happy parts of their lives but not the bad moments. Yet when teenagers perceive this, they start comparing. What this does is makes them feel bad and ruin their entire self-esteem while they’re trying to fit in. It starts to feel like their profile on social media is part of their real identity instead of just a place to share their ideas.

Personal Transformation: A Shift in Perspective

Going back not too long ago, I remembered a specific time when my thinking underwent a change. It was at the beginning of high school most of my friends were going to different schools, so I was starting at a new school without friends, which made me want to be part of the “cool or popular” group. This crowd accepted me, and I would spend most of my time with them. Later, I also started making other friends that had little interest in being part of that same group, which I totally respected but didn’t quite understand their reasons. As I got to know the cool group more, I started seeing them do some things I didn’t like but thought, “Oh, it’s not that big a deal. In order to be cool, they have to try new things and do cool things” This is how badly the group I was hanging out with influenced my thinking. I was starting to think like them. Days after, I had a field trip to the prison where inmates told us their stories and how they ended up locked up; as I was listening to them say over and over, “I’m here because of drugs and alcohol,” I realized that those things were not cool to do and that I didn’t want to end up like them, that’s when I realized that that group I was hanging out with what’s not going to bring anything positive to my life other than problems.

Cognitive Development and Prioritizing Positivity

Later as I was home staring out my window, I realized It was time to make a change; this change can relate to my analytic thought processes. At that point, it was clear that my cognitive development hit a stage where my analytic thought of wanting to be in a positive environment where the right things are getting done was greater than my intuitive thought of believing I needed to be cool in order to survive high school.

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