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Letter: Focus on mental health

Deseret News
Mar 18, 2019

People don't realize that the cause of their loneliness and depression lies within their pocket. Social media is the big reason why many teenagers and adults experience these horrible feelings. You look on Instagram and see your friends having a good life, seeing people care about them, having a fun job, being happy and seeing that they are more popular than you could ever be.

When you see that, you tend to dwell on your life and the more you think about it, the more you realize that you're not as happy as they are. It completely changes a person, whether they are a grown adult or a young child. They may start to think of themselves as worthless, unimportant or just a complete waste of life.

We also don’t realize how much time we spend on our phones, rather than being with a real human being; on average, three and a half hours a day are spent on a device. We think that since we’re interacting with people online, that’s enough to fill our social lives. But in reality, it just makes us all more lonely and miserable. We need real human interaction in order to psychologically survive. We need to get off our phones and go experience the world, meet new people and stop worrying about what we think about each other.

We need to stop focusing on the internet and focus on our mental health. Our brains are much more important than how many likes you get.

Cassidy Eldredge

Salt Lake City

CREDIT: Cassidy Eldredge

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