A child support group has published a report according to which the children are feeling more lonely and insecure because of excessive social media usage. The recent set of stats came from Childline which is a helpline dedicated to catering the mental or psychological issues in children. The data shows that the issues which children are reporting these days have seen an increase of 14% year-on-year. The report also shows that it has received 4636 cases of loneliness related counselling last year.
Many of the reported cases were as a result of using social media. The number has increased from 4063 within a year only. The Independent quoted a boy who called Childline to share about his loneliness concern. “Recently I’ve been feeling really isolated and alone. I see all my friends having a good time on social media and it gets me down, I feel like no one cares enough to invite me.”
Childline is an NSPCC-run helpline service which is accessed a lot by children especially in the UK. The helpline aims to counsel young children so that they do not get mentally sick. The support service is still in a pre-funding mode and is looking for more funds to scale up their services all over the world. The problems that the usage of social media is causing among the children are very common and popular. There have been very distinct opinions with experts who are pointing out that excessive use of social media might cause people to develop the feeling of jealousy, mutual hatred and even loneliness. Previously, Apple’s CEO also pointed out that social media is not good for kids to use.