The Effects of Social Media on Humans

Describe how does social media affects how people see us. What are some of the negative and positive effects of participating in social media sites such as Facebook?

You are walking out of the new Star Wars movie, posting about how superb it was, when suddenly you are swooped up and thrown in the back of a vehicle. No one would have thought posting about how you were there earlier would provoke such a situation. After all, social networking is “safe” and “friendly.” Now, social media is defined as “A form of electric communication through which users create online communities to share information,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Social networking began in 2004 and has sky-rocketed since, due to its sense of world connectivity in a mere moment. However, with this increase, a growth in seemingly harmless threats has occurred. Users sitting behind a screen are usually unaware of how complex and diminishing social networking can be. Social media may be considered negative for society as it changes what members view as behaviorally normal, increases the risk of cyber-suicide, and reduces the amount of privacy in one’s life.

When you are suffering from a debilitating addiction, it 's easy to feel alone, isolated, and frightened during recovery. However, the emergence of social media has helped connect the world in a way never imagined. And you can tap into these brand new resource as a tool towards fueling our recovery and regaining a life of sobriety.

Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are web-based activities that provide individuals access to build a public or a semi-public profile within a confined system, connect and find users that they share a connection with as well as view and navigate the list of connections that are made by other participants of the systems (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Social media is widely used by young adults contributing to about 84% of the total usage (Smith, 2011). Some of the popular reasons for widespread use of social media are staying in touch with near and dear ones especially with friends and family, making new friends, following famous politicians and celebrities and also in search of potential relationships (Smith, 2011). However as the use of social media becomes more widespread, we cannot help but express concerns over the effects that social media usage may have on our behavior. Over the past couple of decades, research has strongly linked social media usage with negative behavioral outcomes and is known to affect one’s overall well-being. This essay will begin by discussing some of the behavioral issues that result from social media usage, followed by criticisms of this argument. The recommendation will then highlight some ways by which the behavioural problems could be dealt with, acknowledging that self-monitoring and self-regulation are the main ways to tackle the issue.

Social media is changing our lives in the way we communicate with the others and building relationships. So, People around us seem to be distracted, and they do not communicate with others as it was without using the social media. Also, some of them have become introverted due to the social media.

Looking in the mirror and not liking what you see is extremely common, among teenage girls especially, but where does it stem from? Is it human nature to see oneself in a negative light? Perhaps it comes from something more tangible, such as one’s surroundings. Everyday, people are exposed to models and celebrities on social media living unrealistic and uncommon lifestyles. Why does everyone insist on striving for these absurd standards? Perhaps it’s because people, predominantly millennials, pride themselves on their ability to ‘accept everyone’ disregarding sexuality, gender, and size, yet they are constantly judging others whether it’s subtle or very evident. Although modern society is more accepting of different body types than in the past, there is still too much pressure on girls to have the ‘perfect’ body due to emphasis from media, pressure from peers, and American culture.

High school is a mosh pit of youths, no longer teenagers, but not yet adults. When hundreds or thousands of them are grouped together under one roof, a breeding ground for both insecurity and narcissism is forged. Forced into a pressure cooker of judgement, harassment, and competition, they seek approval from various sources. Some look to trusted advisers, focusing on academics, sports, and extracurriculars. Others look to their peers, potentially falling into a vicious cycle of drugs, alcohol, partying, and other unhealthy behaviors. Left alone to identify themselves, teens rely on the confirmation of their environment. Whether they live in a small town or an urban city, social media has established a worldwide public platform for the scrutinization of this generation of emerging adults. During these tumultuous years, teenagers find themselves seeking the approval of others. While healthy sources of validification exist, the effects of unhealthy, attention-seeking actions are more damaging and longer lasting.

The TEDx Talks titled, “Social Media’s Impact on Human Behavior,” is about how social media can affect our everyday personality. The speaker, Suryabala Shenbagamurthy, used many examples on how social media can affect you in both a positive and negative way. The purpose of the presentation was to inform how social media can affect us, but was not trying to persuade the audience about what they should believe in. The speaker seemed well-informed about the topic and used many vivid examples to explain how social media is affecting us. The speaker focused on three main ways that social media can affect our emotions, purchase decisions and interests.

| 1. Social media allows youths to share private information that can lead to exploitation and abuse.

When one is struggling trying to figure out one’s own identity, there are resources available. For example, YouTube may have makeup tutorials. However resources for figuring out one’s sexuality may be harder to find. Trying to turn to loved ones may result in judgment. So the Internet is the next best choice. In most cases, blogs are the ideal option because they allow for people to share the personal struggles and triumphs with the world. Upon research Tumblr may come up on a search engine. It is a social media website that hosts millions of blogs.

In today’s society, social media plays a very important role in the lives of everyone. Teens especially are heavily influenced by the constant trends and newest gossip that surfaces daily. As a parent, you should of course try to teach your child the rights from wrong when it comes to being active in the social world. However, in some cases, it may be hard for teens to understand the seriousness of participating in safe social media use.

Most people determine social media valuable to their lives; however the manifestation of it is the loss of physical communication skills. Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist of MIT, strongly argues how social media are causing a loss of real human connection. Turkle explained the difference between texting and face to face conversation clearly they have a very distinct range. Texting has no emotion or feeling toward the person reading them. In the second half of the article, she raised the issue of young children have their cell phones at an early age, and parents are more concerning when their children are not around. Parents take full control the aspect of their children’s life by texting those so many times a day. As a result, children often experience they have less privacy as they require. Turkle also complains that the adults have not taught “the sense of privacy” formally to the young people because they prefer to share the identities on Facebook without realizing it can be the issue later. She implies the only solution to respond the issue is the voluntary self-conscious decision of any individuals should value their privacy.

In these days, people cannot imagine perform modern life with any Internet access that allows people being connected through online networks. It is also the cheaper and powerful way adopted for companies to communicate to their clients and expose products by online advertisements. In order to make all World Wide Web available there are companies that storage and release information such as Google, Facebook and many others that provide entertainment, to their users. These social networking websites are accumulating a massive amount of data and they allow data brokers have access to this information. This fact leads to the negative fact that data brokers with no consumer permission use this information to observe their likes, trends and personal interests to offer products to them, such as travels, cars and houses based on their likes. This abusing consumers’ data problem will be solved by start leaving this issue to the web market that will benefit both users and data companies.

Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. These are the latest social media sites and applications that have been taking over the lives of my generation. The definition of Social Media is anything that is a website or application that enables a user to create and share content or participate in social networking. Since the creation of the telephone, we have been able to call family and friends from just about anywhere. With the internet in 1983, it has allowed us to gain any information with a click of a button. So why not combine the two? Thus was born social media, both an effective way to communicate from one place to the other and obtain all types of information simultaneously. At first this new digital interface seemed harmless, maybe even having the ability to produce something positive. The brighter light shines, the darker the shadow gets, and social media is no exception when it comes to positive and negative effects. From harmless sharing of opinions to bullying of one’s outlook, family photos to pictures of embarrassing acts, social media has gone from bad to worse.

Since the very beginning, face-to-face communication has been an important factor in our lives. This was the only source of communication for a long period of time. Over time, we developed new ways of communicating with each other such as emailing and talking on the phone. Human beings have become so reliant on the use of electronic devices to communicate. Although this is a good way to keep in touch with friends, it can become a serious problem to many individuals. The growth of social media sites began to grow in the year 2003, which was the year that the famous website MySpace was created. For example, I’ve been using social media websites to communicate with my friends for a decade. When I was younger, social media sites were the go-to