A few years ago a BBC article asked ‘is social media causing childhood depression?’ and this story has stuck with me ever since. Another recent BBC article claimed that children as young as 11 are being diagnosed with mental health issues and linked this to the rise in social media.

When I was a child the most stressful situation that I faced was when I lost my Polly Pocket (for those of you that don’t know who or what a Polly Pocket is, it was a teeny tiny doll that lived in a teeny tiny house). My Polly Pocket never had me wondering if I was too fat as she was approximately the size of my fingernail. Today’s children are obsessing over Snapchat and Instagram – so essentially, obsessing over images of themselves, their friends and celebrities. Being bombarded with surgically enhanced, filtered, edited and retouched images day-in-day-out is hard enough as an adult, but what is it doing to the younger generation?

Social media has become a key place through which young people are shaping their identity and self-worth. This is a terrifying concept to think about as a parent, or even when considering becoming a parent.

Anonymous, 29

Photo: Prateek Katyal