Why social media is wrecking mental health: How Instagram, YouTube and TikTok changed our minds—and not for the better

By YEET Magazine Staff, YEET Magazine
Published October 3, 2025

You scroll through your feed, watch one more “perfect life” video, see someone living in luxury, working out to excess, getting surgery, chasing clout—and you feel worse. You try to tell yourself: “It’s just social media.” But deep down, you start questioning everything. Your looks, your lifestyle, your bank account. You feel smaller. Less real.

It’s not just you. It’s the system. Because the introduction of social media has changed the mental health game — and for many people, it’s changed it for the worse. And we’ve ignored it for too long.

The story of how we got here

When social platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok became dominant, they promised connection, creativity, community. But something else crept in: an attention economy, algorithm-feeds, comparison traps and a hyper-consumerist culture of “look how perfect I am, buy what I have, follow me”.

These platforms reward the extreme: the more you click, the more someone posts, the more followers you gain, the more money you make. Suddenly, influencer content went from “I love this, I want to share it” to “I’ll do anything to get likes, sponsorships, views”. Scammers, fake routines, quick money schemes took over. And in that chase for visibility, something real got lost.

Meanwhile, people started comparing: their body, their clothes, their bank balance, their lifestyle. Their real life began to look bad in contrast. Studies show that heavy social media use correlates with increased anxiety and depression. MIT Sloan+2PMC+2 One review says: “use of social media… appears to contribute to increased risk for a variety of mental health symptoms and poor well-being, especially among young people.” PMC+1

Real-life voices behind the problem

Take Samantha (name changed), 23. She joined Instagram at 15, loved makeup and fashion. But by 20 she was chasing followers, posting workout videos, comparing herself to influencers who had 1 million followers. She began restricting food, doing extra hours in the gym, chasing that “Instagram” body. Her therapist told her what she resisted: “You’re comparing someone’s curated highlight reel to your everyday mess.”

Or Tom, 28, content creator who started on YouTube making honest vlogs about his life. Then sponsorships came, metrics became king. He felt he couldn’t show real failures anymore. He says: “I sold out — not because I wanted to, but because I had bills, I had algorithms telling me what works.” Now he feels disconnected from himself.

These stories match the data: more screen time, more investment in maintaining an online image = higher risk for mental health issues. PMC+1

What’s going wrong — the harm side

• Comparison highways: You watch someone’s outfit, routine, bank balance, lifestyle, and you compare. The “look at me” culture becomes the norm. Feeling less than becomes daily. Studies link this to depression. PMC+1
• Attention economy & narcissism: When metrics (likes, follows, views) become your worth meter, the content shifts. Scammers and quick-buck operators flood in, because passion no longer pays as much as reach.
• Misinformation & conspiracies: On platforms like YouTube and TikTok, conspiratorial and extreme content spreads fast, pulling people into echo chambers, derailing real dialogue and destabilizing mental foundations.
• Disconnection from self: Instead of looking inward, understanding who we are, many stay peering outward — “How many likes did I get? How many followers?” We lose the deep rooted conversation with ourselves.
• Anxiety overload: Anxiety is about fear of what hasn’t happened yet, what could happen. Mixed with endless scrolling, comparing, feeling “not enough”, you get a mind that races with “what ifs”. Plus, social media steals sleep, disrupts rest — both big risk factors. mcleanhospital.org+1

What the research actually says

Yes, social media has benefits too (connection, self–expression). JMIR Publications But the negatives are LOUD and real. One systematic review found that while precise cause isn’t always specified, high use and heavy investment in social media was consistently associated with worse mental health outcomes. PMC+1 Another large US survey found: ~19% of teens say social media has hurt their mental health; ~45% say it hurt their sleep. Pew Research Center

In short: Social media is not always the villain, but the way we use it, the culture built around it, and how our minds respond to it — that’s the problem.

Why we’re still ignoring it

• Because social media is everywhere, part of daily life. Hard to point to one cause.
• It’s fun, it’s social, it’s the pipeline to success for many. So criticism sounds like rejection.
• The platforms themselves shift policies, algorithms — but we, the users, don’t always change our habits.
• Mental health issues don’t always show up immediately. The slow creep of comparison, anxiety, identity loss is subtle.

✅ What you can do now

• Take a real social media break. Set intentional time-limits, maybe one day offline.
• Remind yourself that what you see is curated. The “perfect body”, “perfect life”, “perfect bank” are versions of reality, not the full story.
• Prioritize you. Ask: “Who am I when no one’s watching?” Build things for yourself, not for likes.
• Diversify your life: real conversations > comments. Real hobbies > reels. Real sleep > midnight scroll.
• If you feel overwhelmed, compare yourself negatively, losing confidence — talk with someone. You’re not alone.
• Content-diet: unfollow accounts that make you feel bad, over-edited, over-sold. Follow more real, more raw, more you.

In conclusion

The introduction of social media has changed the mental health game — and not in ways we all realize. It’s not just “too much screen time”. It’s a bigger shift in how identity, attention, self-worth, and reality are constructed and contested online.
If we keep turning a blind eye, we’ll keep paying the price: more anxiety, more self-doubt, more people losing themselves in someone else’s highlight reel. The time to take it seriously is now.

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