This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on September 23, 2025.
Shimbo Pastory
In using social media we get informed about uncountable things, from everywhere, and most interestingly with widely varying degree of truthfulness or genuineness. This variance has permeated all content genres given the difference in the interests of social media beneficiaries, that is, platforms owners, content creators, and the final consumer who is the person accessing such content.
In other words, depending on where we are in the world of social media, we can be in the receiving end of its false, misleading, and in the worst case, traumatizing and permanently damaging content.
Most people today learn things from social media, be it politics, social dynamics, health, technology, DIYs (‘do-it-yourself’ tutorials), parenting, languages, etc. The list is endless. The open access nature of social media, especially with the possibility of everyone being a content creator, so long as one has a camera or phone, a tripod, and high dose of confidence, is something we should anticipate with fear.
A relevant analogy in real life would be a hilarious one. We can imagine walking in a crowd and stopping in front of anyone and just listen with so much trust to whatever they have to say, and then move on to a random next person, and another, and another, for hours! This is exactly what we do in the social media, especially in platforms that are visual.
The chances of ten consecutive reels or posts to communicate a similar feeling are extremely minimal. This means ten differently themed posts can take us across ten different ranges of emotional response, such as joy, surprise, fear, worry, anger, agitation, anticipation, disappointment, disgust, assurance, doubts, confusion, etc. the list is endless and unpredictable too, just as human emotional reactions are.
Up to this point, we already see that there is a room for a lot of damage in the cognitive and emotional response of the users of these platforms, especially because for them everything that appears on social media first makes a face-value impression of being real.
We do not automatically judge content in social media as unreal until we have watched and analysed critically. Since we react first before judging the truth value, we are emotionally affected as well before adjudging the ‘realness’ or ‘fakeness’ of what we see on the social media.
These effects are stronger in young people, because they do not have a sufficiently matured sense of judgement, yet the vulnerability is for all social media users, as emotional triggers overlap for children as well as adults, even though they may not be exactly the same.
It is important that as a nation of predominantly young population, we take note and inform our people, especially our young people of these issues, to help ease the societal burden on mental health issues that can arise from excessive consumption of social media.
It is already established by researchers that exposure to short-video content for children damages their capability to learn, to remember, and to concentrate. These childhood issues predicate more complex issues in adulthood, as they are hardly reversible given the delicacy of the early age when the damage is done.
However, to avoid being overly theoretical, we need to discern what can be the best modus operandi with social media, as it is practically an indispensable social as well as economical player.
Emphasis on the productive use of social media is needed from the lower levels, educating young people of the uncountable opportunities of use of social media, as well its many dangers, including addiction, propaganda, explicit content, artificial intelligence, curated persona, digital illusions, false news, cyber-bullying, scams, etc. and how they can protect themselves and their digital personalities. It is worth noting that all these have contributed so much in the emotional rollercoaster that shakes and spins social media users.
It is good we begin to integrate awareness about holistic health which includes mental and emotional health. For most people, inasmuch as they are not physically sick, they can hardly accept being in need of therapy or help. Education is needed in this area, as the harmful effects of mental health and emotional problems are felt all around us.
Constantly exposing children to social media can shorten their attention time and affect their cognitive growth of information procession, making them shallow thinkers as they do not consume information fully nor do they understand and store in the long term memory.
Many children lack proper sleep, have mood swings, lack focus, lose touch with real world interaction, and many lean towards imitating risky behaviours they encounter in social media as they are incapable of differentiating clearly reality in the social media from the real life.
However, parental guidance can make social media advantageous to children and can help them to learn, to be more creative, and to feel they are part of the global community given their global awareness. Parental control will help children to mature properly emotionally as they use social media.
Shimbo Pastory is an advocate for positive social transformation and is a student of the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Website: www.shimbopastory.com