What do you predict would happen to the world if social media vanished one day? Immediately, society might go insane from screen time deprivation and not exercising their thumbs by scrolling through social media apps such as Tik Tok and Instagram. I predict that if social media were to vanish, it could have many possible outcomes. These potential outcomes might include complete chaos and overthrow of the government, mental illnesses would decrease quickly from less pressure on themselves from unrealistic beauty standards presented by social media, people would go outside more and be productive, eye health would improve from not staring at a phone screen all day, addiction to phones might drop heavily, relationships with friends would either fail or flourish depending on the need to see each other instead of relying on messaging through social media, or the friends would lose contact with each other. Their friendship would burn into the ground. Going off of my last article about social media opinions, many people said that they like social media to easily communicate with long-distance friends from other countries. If social media were to vanish suddenly, I would lose contact with all of the friends that I made on my exchange trip to Germany in 2019. Think about what you would do in a world without social media. Do you think it would impact your life positively, negatively, or wouldn’t affect you at all? To get answers from our school, I asked all different kinds of people the question, “What would you do if social media didn’t exist anymore?”

Let’s evaluate their responses:

It’s hard to say because it’s been a part of your lives for as long as I can remember. Still, I would probably be less insecure because there’d be less of a way I could compare myself to people on social media -anonymous.

I would probably spend more time with my friends and my family and homework, and then I would be on my phone- Amanda Williamson

I probably wouldn’t talk to anybody- Sophia Tsiokos.

In this situation, I probably wouldn’t end up talking to anybody -Meghan Maroney.

My mental health would be a lot better- Veronica Mosad.

I wouldn’t be on my phone and more time for friends and family-Abbi Savage.

I would go outside more- Sophia Vallone

I am not a big social media Person- Mr. Ciserano.

I wouldn’t be aggravated by posts, and I would be less stressed. It’s an addiction- Ms. Brown.

I grew up without it, so nothing would change – Mrs. Governali.

Write a book- Hayden Thaler.

I would live my life normally and, find different hobbies and go outside more -Jacob Arreugi

I would sleep a lot-Oba Awolowo.

I’d make a new social media platform -Emir Jennings.

There is a commonality between the responses that people would be more productive with their time and mental health. More negative aspects include not speaking to your friends. There were more positive outlooks than bad ones, and as you can see, there were minimal, neutral outlooks as well. If I were to ask only adults instead of teachers and students, the results would most likely be more neutral among that focus group.

It was fascinating to hear what people had to say about this topic. The different responses gave me a better idea of what would happen to our world and society if social media were to disappear.