Facebook was first introduced to me when I was 13 years old and it was a simple app which we used to interact with friends and family. Now at 25 years, I hate the platform because what was simple has been turned into something so horrendous that I am even ashamed to be associated with it.

I know that we should be thanking Mark for coming up with the concept of Facebook. This was supposed to be the greatest invention of all time, well according to me anyways. My first cell phone came with the app already pre-installed and I loved that app . Posting anything that was on my mind and liking posts always gave me that dopamine boost. The features were so minimal that even “boomers” could use it without any difficulties. There was this fun feature which was called “poking” and no one really knew what it was for but we would use it to poke each other back and forth.

It is so sad to see what that simple app has turned into over the years. Facebook has now turned into a cesspool of cyberbullying and so-called “influencers” who are doing nothing but worsening the mental health crisis.

Facebook is the face of cyberbullying. When I was 22 years old, I was cyberbullied by someone who shared a selfie that I had posted on that day. This guy targeted my lips and made them the butt of the joke. Other people even joined in to bully me. It was the first time that it happened on social media. This incident lowered my already non-existent self-esteem. The attack on me also worsened my anxiety and I ended up deleting my Facebook account altogether.

Statistics show that 87% of cyberbullying happens on Facebook with only 37% of that being reported. The worse part about these stats is the targets of bullies are people over the age of 19 which means that bullying is not something that stops in high school.

They have listed ways in which you can stop being cyberbullied, but how can you when it allows random people that you have never met to send you message requests. There is an option to report but with non-English speaking countries, they are not able to tell if someone was throwing around words that they should not have been. Victims of bullying then have no choice but to block the perpetrators. Even so, it does not take away the fact that someone said what they said. It sticks with you forever.

This app has also been preying on young adults by making us insecure about the way we look. Not a day goes by where I don’t see an influencer with the perfect body and the perfect life. This causes me to envy these people and want to have what they have. These influencers then prey on our insecurities by selling us the products which have given them perfect skin and bodies whilst they know that most of their pictures are fully edited. They profit from our anxiety and deepen our depression because most of these products rarely work.

The Facebook platform has also taught me that my body as a woman is seasonal. It is a fashion trends in which every other year I have to change it to suit the current one. For the past few years, there was a rise in the slim-thick trend where women would go to extreme lengths to get the hourglass shape. These lengths included surgery and others wearing corsets for extended periods. Some of these women even died from complications from the surgeries. This year, social media is now advertising the thinner is the better trend.

When will our bodies as women stop being seen as trends? As long as we are supporting these social media influencers, we won’t get out of the hole we have dug ourselves into.

Facebook is no longer a social media platform for socialising, rather it has turned into a place where people log in to compare their lives with how others live theirs. It’s no longer the safe platform that gave you a sense of community. It’s a pity that it has turned out this way but hopefully one day people will log out for good and work on their mental health issues without the distraction that is Facebook.