By Italy Escobar and Maryi Orellana
Trinity Times Correspondents
Social media has become a dominant force for college-age Americans living in a growing digital age, and for Trinity Washington University freshman Sara Balseca, it’s a positive path to an enriching existence.
Balseca follows Analis Cruz, a famous fitness influencer on Instagram, a popular social media platform. Cruz has about 3 million followers and motivates people to achieve their goals by providing exercise routines and healthy meal recipes.
Though 18-year-old Balseca views her social media interactions as a positive element in her life, psychology professionals say there is growing evidence that platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook can also harm young people’s mental health.
Balseca, a business administration student at Trinity, said her most important goal is to grow her mindset — learning how to balance work and life by dividing her time between school assignments and free time to do things she enjoys.
She said social media has positively impacted her life by expanding her social skills. It has helped her become more open, get out of her comfort zone and connect with other people.
According to Trinity Health and Wellness Center counselor Ivana Alexander, social media plays an important role in people’s lives, both positively and negatively.
“Having very easy access to information can be convenient and helpful,” Alexander said. “However, we must do our research to ensure that the sources we get the information from are credible because there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation.”
Not all adolescents have the same experience with social media, Alexander told Trinity Times. She said social media can be used in a healthy way — keeping people connected with those they care about and helping build new connections.
On the other hand, when used unhealthily, social media can cause negative consequences such as depression and anxiety. Alexander said comparing our bodies to others we see online can lead to harmful self-image issues.
“We have to be very intentional about giving ourselves a break so that we can focus on other things, such as engaging with your friends in person, going outside in nature, going to work out, and getting some physical activity,” Alexander said. She emphasized that connecting with the real world is essential for self-growth instead of relying solely on the digital world.
Balseca said she spends about five hours a day on Instagram and TikTok. She created her account at age 12 with her parents’ permission. Originally from Quito, Ecuador, Balseca graduated from Jackson-Reed High School in Washington, D.C., before attending Trinity.
There is a correlation between social media use and depression among teenagers and young adults, according to the 2025 study “Does Social Media Use Cause Depression?” by the Child Mind Institute.
The study shows individuals who spend more time on platforms like Instagram and Facebook report higher rates of depression. Some reasons cited include less fulfilling online connections, increased feelings of isolation, negative impacts on self-esteem, reduced time for healthy activities, sleep deprivation, and fear of missing out (FOMO).
MaryJo Kolze, a psychology professor at Trinity, explains FOMO as “the discomfort you feel when your values and actions don’t match,” adding that social media intensifies FOMO by constantly showcasing others’ happy moments.
“So, you’ve decided not to go to some sort of event, but you see everybody else having so much fun at the event,” Kolze said. “This causes a discrepancy, and you feel bad about the decision that you’ve made before.
“Instead of being a healthy cycle that evolutionarily helped us, now it’s a worse cycle that’s snowballing, and we’re just experiencing the lower self-esteem and the higher cognitive dissonance over and over and over again,” she told Trinity Times.
Kolze said understanding self-esteem requires recognizing the psychological theory of social comparison, which can be either upward or downward.
“When we are doing upward social comparison, we are looking at people who we want to be like,” she said. “We can also do the downward social comparison, and this is where we compare ourselves to people who are not as good as us to feel better about ourselves.”
Kolze said social media changes how people view themselves.
“In the world of social media, when everybody’s getting to curate their best look, downward social comparison becomes really hard because everybody is hiding all of those negative issues,” she said. “If you’re constantly seeing everybody’s best picture and you have nothing to use downward social comparison with, now our main mechanism for maintaining self-esteem goes away.”
According to “A Systematic Review: The Influence of Social Media on Depression, Anxiety and Psychological Distress in Adolescents,” published by the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth in 2019, at least 92% of teenagers are active social media users.
“It is fair to say that there is an ‘association’ between social media use and mental health problems, on the basis that this means a socially constructed reality,” the article asserts.
Kolze noted research suggesting the negative effects of social media may be worse in teenage girls because they engage more in social comparison and their self-identity is more dependent on the views of others.
“I do know that there’s a lot of research out there on correlations specifically for teenage girls with lower identity and lower self-esteem,” she said. “I think the issue might be worse for girls than for boys,” and “girls’ self-identity is more impacted by the views of other people. They engage in more social comparison than boys do.”
Balseca said she often uses her phone as a distraction. She has compared herself to others on social media but tries not to focus too much on it, preferring instead to stay active and engaged in physical activities.