Argumentative Essay On Social Media

Twenty years ago, people started their day reading the morning paper, but nowadays we start our morning with our eyes locked on our phones. We are hooked in the age of social media, where millions of teenagers worldwide are using it every second. However, the mental and emotional health of teenagers are at risk when they are exposed to long-term social media usages. It begins as an addiction, and it gradually builds its way up to cause low self-confidence, and even depression. On the bright side, engaging in nature, speaking to somebody, and avoiding social media are effective solutions in solving this 21st century crisis.

Social media is a modern way human beings connect with each other. By posting photos of one’s everyday moments that share experiences and one’s daily thrills for all to see. Social media allows one to communicate as well with comments and likes. The comments and likes keeps one’s personal internet community connected within each other. The community ranges from family members, close friends, past friends from high school, and even strangers in some cases. So, is social media a blessing or curse? “Irrespective of the terminology used, it is evident that excessive internet use results in decreased work productivity, neglect of daily life activities, affects family time, relationships get strained, communication within family reduces, meal quality get affected, reduction in hobbies and developing mental health issues” (Nawaz & Anand, 2003; Young, 1998; Beard, 2005; Kraut et al., 1998). Can something that designed to bring one together with others somehow pull each other apart. The time spent is excessive and can lead to personal dangers. The dangers can be addressed if the time spent is limited. Human beings should limit their use of social media because the dangers brought towards one’s life such as social interactions, health, one’s identity, self-worth, and academics. Life is something we face and deal with naturally, not electronically. Social media is an unnatural way to grow up. With simple adjustments, one can solve these issues created as

Picture for a second, someone reading the newspaper trying to figure out what’s going on around the world. Now when was the last time you saw someone read a newspaper? A long time ago? Can’t remember? And if someone was to ask where you discover the latest news from, you’d probably say, “social media.” Social media has gotten out of hand, it’s overused and which use to be a great resource but now keeps getting abused.

Nowadays, a lot of people are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler and so on. Since the Internet has propagated rapidly, social media have progressed a lot. The generalization of the internet makes us to live conveniently and fast. People are almost using smart phones, i-phones or comfortable devices which can access to internet. These equipments make us to do social network easily. It helps contact friends, family, and other people even though they live far away. It could be, however, abused, if you don’t use properly. Especially, it is important that we understand and regulate the use of social media by young children.

There is a transformation happening today that is completely changing the way that we do things. The ways that we are communicating are shifting from face to face interactions to short, interactive messages. Technology seems to be making it easier to stay connected, but it is restricting our interactions with others and leading to isolation.

With growing social unrest in the United States, due to differing political and social opinions, many young adults have taken to social media to share their beliefs with anybody that is willing to listen. The importance of social media in social and political movements became clear to many people during the rise of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Anybody that had an opinion on the campaign could take to their personal social media sites and share what they had to say. While mass media, like news companies and talk shows, allows opinions and biases to spread due to a single, often influential, person sharing their beliefs to a viewership, social media allows anybody to have a say in an issue and brings differing opinions together. By starting social movements on applications such as Twitter and Facebook, users and activists are not limited to the audience that subscribes to that particular site, but rather are able to be heard by anybody and create conversation beyond a small circle of friends and family. Twitter and other social media sites are valuable ways for young adults to read and distribute news in a way that eliminates the bias of the mainstream media towards big social movements and helps propel these movements further, specifically the racial profiling of blacks in the media.

Social media has been dominating people’s lives for years now. It is a way for people to stay connected with their family, friends, and even see what their favorite celebrities are doing. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are just a few of the social media sites that people love to use. These sites are used mostly by young adults. I believe social media can be a positive thing, but it can also have some negative effects. Young adults have become dependent on social media likes, retweets, followers and friends to determine validation and self-worth; these elements of social media are important to teenagers. Young adults need to take a step back from social media and focus more on reality, because they can become dependent on it, take it too seriously, and it can affect their mental health.

Our society has become heavily reliant on social media, and today’s younger generation cannot avoid using it in their everyday lives. As time has progressed, social media has advanced significantly, becoming easier to access with a touch of a button. These advancements provide both positive and negative consequences to youths’ relationships. Due to the rapid advancement of social media, youths’ real-life relationships with their peers have been affected both positively and negatively.

Brian Solis, author of the book, Engage, once wrote, “social media spark a revelation that we, the people, have a voice, and through the democratization of content and ideas we can once again unite around common passions, inspire movements, and ignite change.” “I thought I was never going to meet my grandkid,” are the words of a grandmother with low resources living far away from her family, after video calling with her grandkid’s parents. Social Media has changed the world and has made possible, the impossible. Social Sites opened a road full of opportunities for those who desirably want to help many others all around the world. Social Websites are more helpful than dangerous because they help families and friends keep in touch, it’s actually good for democracy, and social media helps raise millions for good causes.

We are the generation that no longer strives to keep things hidden. Instead we do the complete opposite and prefer everything to be out in the open, we are the open generation, a generation that lacks privacy. We give society this opportunity by posting our life on social media. We allow access to our personal information, not only to our friends and family, but strangers as well but our generation doesn’t see this as a bad thing.

Is social media good for you, or bad? A study of 12 million Facebook users by Hobbs, Burke, Christakis, & Fowler, in 2016, suggested that using Facebook is associated with living longer although the true purpose is to maintain and enhance your real-world social ties. Interacting online seems to be healthy when the online activity is moderate and complements interactions offline. People with more friends and more social ties in their community tend to live longer” (pg.1) (Hobbs, Burke, Christakis, & Fowler, 2016). It is only on the extreme end, spending a lot of time online with little evidence of connection to people otherwise, that we see a negative association.

Social media has become a huge part of today’s generation. It is how we interact with others from different parts of the world. Others share their everyday lives and exciting moments through videos and photos. There are several different social media outlets that make these ongoing events available to teens. Including, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat; which all share some form of communication.

The wonderful creation that took over this new generation is social media. Social media is a way for people to express their selves, promote, make friends, entertain, etc. Some of the major platforms are: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. According to Margaret Rouse, from Whatis.com,” Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.” I agree with this statement. Social media is a part of our lives that may never go away.

At the beginning of the technology age there are bound to be some heavy influences when it comes to social media and the way voting will be affected by it. That doesn’t change the fact that change is constant, and the thing about change and our society is that we learn to adapt to new ideas and challenges relatively fast. Democracy evolves as we evolve and it has always been that way.

Do you ever ask yourself, is this post necessary to share with others? How will this post affect the lives of those around me? As of 2017, The Global Overview showed that “2.80 billion global social media users use social media sites.” With that being said, “the whole world now uses a smart phone and almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone.” (Digital in2017: Global Overview). Today the majority of young American adults use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram and etc. As of the recent years, social media has been a great way to connect with friends, family and has also been a great way to promote small businesses. Amy Jo Martin once said, “Just as we teach our children how to ride a bike, we need to teach them how to navigate social media and make the right moves that will help them. The physical world is similar to the virtual world in many cases. It's about being aware. We can prevent many debacles if we're educated.” (Brainyquotes.com) With that being said, Amy is stating, just how we teach our children anything in life we must also teach them the basics of social media because that will one day affect them later in life. Therefore, social media can be effective but can also affect others life’s around us.