During quarantine, teenagers have been spending much more time on social media than they did before March 2020. With doing online school for so long, it has been so much easier to be on social media throughout the day. Being stuck inside all day long for months has led to much boredom, leading to kids spending their time on TikTok or Snapchat. 

During quarantine, teens and social influencers started to post videos and pictures of themselves trying new things, leading to kids watching and doing the same thing. For example, whipped coffee became a huge trend in about April 2020. Teens on TikTok started making it and then creating videos of them making it, causing many videos to go viral. Many social media trends were the cure to kids’ boredom. It gave them something to do in the midst of the pandemic.

“I think it affected teens by being on social media and it has affected them in a negative way, because now that they have been on their phones more, they start to compare themselves to others,” sophomore Annaray Hatt said.

With social media influencers and stars posting pictures of themselves, teens might start looking at the pictures and wondering why they don’t look like that. Having those thoughts can be extremely bad for mental health and can potentially cause body image issues. Teens spending so much time on social media due to quarantining can lead to even more issues with that.

Apps like Google Duo usage has increased by 12.4% and HouseParty with a usage increase of 79.4% between Jan. 15 and March 24. With not being able to see people due to quarantining, teens and adults all over the world resorted to video chatting with their friends and family. Usage between video chatting apps had started going up throughout quarantine with families having to spend birthdays and holidays away from each other.

Many parents feel that way about their children using social media. They think it’s bad for them, cause them to never go outside and let them not be verbally social. With there being so many social media apps out there, teens are on it so much that it has even become a stereotype for them to be snapchatting each other when they are sitting right next to one another. 

“I’m not a big fan of social media for kids or teens, but they are using it,” Shannon Sanders said.

Snapchat’s usage had gone up 25% from late February to late March. Snapchat is one of the most popular apps among teens today. It consists of sending each other pictures and videos and being able to post them to your stories for everyone to see too. With being home all of the time, teens had been Snapchatting each other all hours of the day and night trying to keep up with each other.

Facebook is a more common social app with people of all ages using it to keep up with their families. The app currently has 2.8 billion users and is currently the leading social media platform. Many parents use Facebook to post pictures of their children doing family activities for aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family members and friends to see. With COVID-19 affecting people’s way of seeing each other, most people have resorted to going online.