The Negative Effects Of Social Media

Social media has become a part of our life, and no one can imagine living without it. Social media has grown a lot over the several years. Young individuals have always thought that social media is a marvelous piece of technology, but they never think about the negative effects of ‘like’ culture, which contributes to conformity and other negative consequences. The article, The Insidious Evils of ‘Like’ Culture, written by Neil Strauss, tells us about to what people can go to get more “likes.”

According to a recent study by IDC Research, 80% of smartphone users check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up each morning.

In the article, Liliana Escobar-Chaves and Craig Anderson focus on how youth are spending more time on social media and how that time spent of social media is causing them to bring negative effects to society. The authors go on to explain how the trends in increased social media use is increasing the health risks of obesity, smoking, drinking, unsafe sex and violence. The authors provide an in-depth look into each health risk and provide multiple facts and research studies to help support their claims. These research studies provide a clear and excellent understanding into how the increase in the use of social media can have a negative effect on the health risks they mentioned in the article.

As of 2015, more than two billion people (30 percent of the world’s population) are active on social media. Since then social media’s number of active users has grown and is continuing to grow day by day. As the number of active users increases so does the number of addictions that occur from it. Different groups of people say social media is a good thing because it lets everyone stay in touch but there have been many different arguments and studies that prove that social media can be bad depending on how much society uses it. Social media addictions produce negative effects in a person's life such as ruined relationships, low self-esteem, and physical exhaustion.

“Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection”-Roxane Gay.

Used by the majority of Americans, social media has become a prominent source of entertainment, education, and communication. Social media is consistently at the fingertips of the average American, however, with this much exposure it has been shown to display negative effects, including of mental illness, addiction, low self-esteem and an outlet for bullying. Eventually, this can result in the downfall of social media

In our world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media, we are connected with people more than ever before. One would think that we are interacting more socially and bringing people together regularly. However, with each passing generation, experts are learning the real implications of social platforms and how it is negatively affecting our social skills and mental health. According to Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, people are more connected to one another than ever before in human history, thanks to internet-based social networking sites and text messaging. But they’re also more lonely and distant from one another in their unplugged lives.

Growing up in the age of internet and being millennials, social media is as natural to the people of today as breathing or drinking water. Social media is a “series of websites and applications that have been designed to allow people to share content and communicate with each other quickly and efficiently” (“What is Social Media, 2017). A few people have a more confined perspective of social media likening it to mean the same as social networking on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. The power of social media is such that, the number of people using it worldwide is expected to reach 2.95 billion by 2020, which is a third of the world’s entire population (Facts, 2017). Social media has been described as being more addictive than even cigarettes and alcohol because it has entered so deeply into the lives of young people that it is almost impossible to stop using it every day (Winefield, Gill, Taylor & Pilkington, 2017). Today, social media can serve as a helping tool in changing a person’s life but at the same time it could also lead to a conflict which might have a negative impact on a person. As summarized by Huppert “Psychological well-being is all about the lives going well. It is a dual combination of feeling good and functioning effectively” (2009, p.137). Social media affects our psychological well-being in many different ways, both positively and negatively. Due to the broad nature of this topic, this essay will focus equally on both the pros and cons

How many hours a day do you think you spend using social media? Some people spend hours on hours of time on social media. When people spend so many hours on their phones and computers looking at social media it tends to make them lazy and anti-social. People end up getting addicted to social media and it affects their work performance, the employees would be on their phones looking at Facebook and other social media platforms instead of doing their work. Social media is also the reason for social standards, and people, mainly teenagers, think poorly of themselves and how they look to others. There are many negative effects of social media, it makes people hate the way they look, making teens lazy, and it also can hurt people’s chances of getting a job or keeping it.

Many students walk around campus with their eyes on their phones checking up on the new trends or pop culture. Is social media affecting college students in a negative way? Yes, their grades drop, become less focused in their daily lives, and social media can make someone less social. When do you see a full classroom with no people on their phone for the whole duration of the class? The answer to that is rare to never happening. Freedom is a huge reason for the amount of people on social media.

The study found that some kids actually alter their behavior in real life in service of their social media profiles. Conducted by British Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield, the study analyzes children within the range from age eight to age 12. Longfield says that children are being exposed to massive emotional liability by social media companies, and she adds that these kids start secondary school lacking the ability to cope with the kind of severe pressures they’ll face online by way of sites and apps like Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. These three, in fact, were found to be among the most popular networks accessed by children within this age range despite each one allegedly requiring users to be no younger than 13 to create a profile.

Isolation is increasing in my life since social media are taking such a huge roll in it. I have discovered that social media is helping me build walls in my own life. I notice the continuous blank stare at my phone as I roam the halls of Florida International University. It’s as if my social anxiety is a broken leg and my cellphone is my crutch. My cell phone brings me so much comfort, although I am comforted, I feel so disconnected with the world. Learning is much easier through social media websites. I am anti-social during school and with myself. All of this brings me to the conclusion that social media causes negative impacts in my daily life. Some of which include avoiding peers around the halls and using the internet to learn. I am not an electronic loving person, but why am I allowing social media to lock me up with handcuffs that I don’t have the keys for?

With the development of technology, the social media has become an obbligato part of our life. In the 19th century, people still used the newspapers as their main source of information about their city; in the 20th century, with the popularity of electricity, people started to listen to radio and watch television to know the event of their country; in the 21st century, computers and mobile phones gradually become popular, people enjoy the convenience and comfort of internet. However, does the social media usually give people a positive impact? Just like Allcott and Gentzkow said, “American democracy has been repeatedly buffeted by changes in media technology.” (211) Social Media creates a negative effect on today’s world by influencing the presidential election, disrupting politics, and controlling the business. Some people use social media to spread rumors and satisfy an own personal desire, and the biggest and the nearest effect of our daily life is the 2016 presidential election of the United States.

Peter Drucker is best known for being the Father of Modern Management, as well as being the author of several books and articles about innovation, entrepreneurship and strategies for dealing with the world. Drucker once said, “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said” (Drucker). Social Media has an had enormous effect on the world today. Everyday people are posting cruel comments and inappropriate posts about others without thinking about the effect it can have on that person. Although these sites provide us with easier ways of connecting with the world, they also have a negative impact on how people can view themselves. Social media sites such as, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram cause negativity all over the world today.

Nowadays, it is not only common to have social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but expected. Many people know the numerous benefits of signing-up for these accounts: keeping in touch with friends, being able to organize information and photographs, keeping track of dates or news, and many more. However, new research suggests that the use of these social media networks, specifically Twitter, can cause great unhappiness in relationships (“Twitter use…”). It appears that the social media page can act as a third member of the relationship. The use of these networks can take up so much time of one or both of the partners, that it is like having another person in the relationship. Unfortunately, this loss of time as