Amid growing concerns that social media has an adverse effect on the mental health of minors, controversy has arisen that Snapchat, popular among teenagers in Anglo-American, even promotes discord in children’s companionship. They say that the function of Snapchat, which displays “best friend ranking,” can cause anxiety and jealousy.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 30th that Snapchat’s “Friend Solar System” feature is causing inconvenience between friends. Snapchat is a mobile messenger used by more than 20 million U.S. teenagers to call it “teens’ social media.”
The “Friend’s Solar System” is a feature included in Snapchat Plus that pays 3.99 U.S. dollars per month to use. This is a method of showing intimacy depending on the user’s communication frequency to a solar system planet. The user himself is set to the sun, and in the order of those who are active in communication, he is marked as Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc., which are close to the sun.
The problem is that ranking friendship causes anxiety among teenagers. Children sometimes feel jealous, betrayed, and frustrated, depending on whether they are included in the solar system or not, whether they are Mercury or Jupiter. Maximilian Milovidov of the U.K. told the WSJ that “I was hurt to find out that I was behind my friend’s Snapchat ranking.” Carly Sittinger, 15, said, “It was hard to get angry when my boyfriend saw that he was Neptune and the other boy was Mercury.”
Recently, there has been an increasing movement in the West to regulate social media as it has an adverse effect on teenagers. On the 25th of last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law banning children and teenagers under the age of 14 from joining social media accounts. Last year, 41 U.S. states filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram, claiming that excessive addiction is damaging the mental health of minors, and four Canadian education offices filed a lawsuit against social media for the same reason on the 28th of last month.
SALLY LEE
US ASIA JOURNAL
