by Delfin Antonio

March 6, 2020

Q: What’s your name ,your grade, and SLC?

A: My name is Orla, I’m a sophomore and I do Arts & Humanities.

Q: My first question is how do you feel about social media in general?

A: My thoughts on Social Media is that it can be really helpful sometimes but also really hurtful and just bring down mainly teenagers because it can hold a lot of false ideas of what you’re supposed to look like, think, and be like. Education and career-wise, I do think it can be really beneficial, but when it comes to modeling and showing off your “perfect life”, it can be really bad.

Q: How addicted would you say you’re to social media? 

A: I’m not gonna hide it, I go on my phone for 4-5 hrs a day and I am on Instagram a lot. I use my phone for schoolwork as well but mainly for social media because you can use it so easily nowadays. Every kid has a phone. So yeah, I go on it pretty often.

Q: Do you think you would be able to continue a normal life without it?

A: I feel like if it was taken away right now and I was told that I couldn’t have a phone anymore I’d be really upset but eventually I would fill my time with other things and I think that would be a lot more healthier for me honestly. I wish I could do that but because life right now is so open to technology , you need it for almost anything. I do think I can live life without it if there were other ways to do it.

Q: Does the amount of likes , comments and views affect you?

A: Yes it does, it really affects my social esteem and my whole thought on myself almost because I’m so harsh on myself and I think a lot of teenagers are too. I was recently hospitalized for anorexia nervosa for 3 months because I was malnourished and it was because I saw so many unachievable things on social media that I wanted but I couldn’t have.

Q: Have you ever found yourself comparing yourself to other people on social media including your peers?

A: Yeah, I think myself and others right now compare lives too much, like on social media they only post what they wanna post. So from an outside perspective, it looks like they all have perfect lives.

Q: Do you think the amount of followers someone has affects their ego and confidence?

A: Me personally, not so much. I’m not a super popular person and I’m okay with that. For everyone else , it’s really different. For an egotistical person already , if they have a lot of people looking up to them it can grow probably and with movie stars maybe but I mean they’re already big in society, but me as a person, no. 

Q: Which social media app do you use the most and why?

A:  Instagram. Every kid has it. It’s open to almost every aspect of interest: art , celebrities, friends. Just almost everything.