Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Pinterest. YouTube.

Many students have at least one or more of these social media networks. They connect us to others across the globe, allow us to share new ideas and voice our own opinion and be who we are.

Redefined beauty and new insecurities are two major negative aspects of social media. These are especially difficult for students.

Many social media users choose to only post their best moments, aspects and pictures

on media. Today, what you post matters.

The black and white filter continually posted for aesthetic reasons, the struggle of coming up with a witty and relatable caption and  the constant search for more and more likes are all for one silly app on your iPhone. Instagram and many other forms of media have become a game of who can look the best, the prettiest, or the most perfect. Social media users have become too serious with an app that was intended for fun purposes.

In addition, cyberbullying doesn’t help either. After that perfect photo is posted, filtered to perfection and captioned with “the best caption ever”, a nasty comment, even from a stranger, could be posted and could ruin someone’s day.

According to dosomething.org, almost 43 percent of kids have been cyberbullied, and 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once.

Even scarier than that, about 75 percent of students have admitted to visiting a site that bashes another student, and 90 percent of teens ignore it. This doesn’t even take into account that 81 percent of teenagers think cyberbullying is easier to get away with than traditional face-to-face bullying, based on dosomething.org.

Anyone can see online threats are a serious topic, one which we didn’t have before the past 10 years. Online bullies are also harder to find, using fake names or hiding any way of finding them all together.

However, there is definitely a way of bringing others online closer to you. However, this is just the issue. Judgment of others is very high, which creates never seen self-confidence issues, such as not feeling good enough compared to another user.

We need to find better ways to find cyberbullies and create a way to make sure that network users are being respectful online.

Events this year, such as controversial Twitter polls, have shown the disrespectful side of social media. We can achieve the respect needed by creating safe internet awareness, such as taking cyberbullying as a serious offense. By showing the effects of bullying we can prevent it and show the serious costs of this important issue. With this help, we can make sure that social media doesn’t get as serious and cause issues self-confidence issues.

While social media does have some positive attributes, such as creating more social relationships, there are many more negatives that now dominate social media, such as cyberbullying, redefined beauty, and insecurity. This issue must be solved, and everyone can take part in that by standing up to cyberbullies and making the effects of this problem known.