An Open Letter to my Little Sister Destroyed by Social Media  

Submitted by Audrey Perry

Dear little sister, 

I know you are growing up, but I did not expect you to turn 16 overnight. You used to love drawing and playing outside, but now you prefer to scroll on TikTok or go shopping at Sephora. The problem is that you are still 10. You are obsessed with what you see on the screen at the point where influencers took my place as your best friend. You believe everything they say without doubting them, but today I will convince you that their influence has unfavourable effects on youth.  

First, a report made by Erikson Institute in 2016 showed that only 15 per cent of a group of 1,000 parents surveyed prohibit their children from using technology at home, which broke my big sister’s heart. This obsession of yours has been spread to all children of your generation. Today’s youth is imprisoned in a digital world. 

Furthermore, since you are quickly becoming a teenager, keep in mind that at this age, you become immensely easy to influence because of your search for identity. Adolescence is a complex process where kids are slowly evolving to become adults, and there’s a lot of testing involved. Teens sometimes change their hair colour every month, go from job to job or build new circles of friends just to leave after two years. Creating ourselves involves hard mental work. Consequently, teenagers will doubt themselves by comparison to their friends or feel a rush of intense emotions due to their peak of hormones. These impulsive actions and this mindset can only prove that youth is mentally fragile while they forge themselves. As a result, they are effortlessly influenced by anyone, which is why social media is a dangerous place for adolescents.

Social media has been invented with the aim of creating an addiction among users, and it’s more than effective. … Mila, do you realize that Mom needs to shut down the Wi-Fi to force you to socialize?  I bet not, you became visually impaired of your entourage. That is what an obsession is; being continuously preoccupied by one precise thing, which is, in your case, social media.  In fact, all these monstrous inventions limit your world significantly to your screen by giving you the impression that you are part of a community. Thus, you are convinced that every valuable interaction can only be made on social media, which makes you forget the real world, forget that you are in front of your screen, not in it. Consequently, when it comes to meeting real people, you hide behind me to avoid them, since you have no clue how to act with a human being. 

Concisely, social media has gigantic impacts on youth, which is the reason I need you, Mila, to delete every social media platform that is turning you into a zombie. As a sister, I am terrified to see you lose yourself to those wicked apps, more each day and what is even more frightening is to think that your generation is all in the same boat. I promise you that getting rid of this unnecessary hobby will only bring you benefits and protect you from vicious consequences.  

*The writer is a student at Collège Lionel-Groulx.