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.

The use of social media never really impacted me until the early 2010’s. It was never really my cup of tea to be on Instagram, Snapchat etc. As I gotten older and older I started to really get into things like Snapchat and Instagram. I didn’t make my first instagram until my 10th grade year of High School. Throughout the years I have met plenty of people that I have became close with through the media. Sometimes it is good sometimes it is bad and that is why I try to distance myself from it. That is pretty much my storyline of my social media life, now it's time to give it an outlook as a whole in the teenage world.

With the emergence of Facebook, the way people communicate with each other changed forever. A social network allowing users to share the events of their lives through posting photos and status updates, to monitor the lives of their friends, and to communicate directly via a built-in messenger has revolutionized Internet communication, causing millions of people all over the world to share all kinds of information about themselves. There were, of course, other social networks before Facebook, but none of them garnered such a significant user base, remained as persistent, and continued to act as an effective form of communication as much as Facebook did. Along with Facebook, currently there are many other social networks, each with their own features and purposes; what unites them all, though, is the idea of sharing. Seemingly, this should positively impact the communication skills of users, since it allows communication even for people far away from each other, or who are unable to communicate live. However, there have been numerous research studies proving the opposite: social media platforms not only impair a user’s ability to share thoughts, but distort communication processes, creating more problems than they solve.

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.

Vulnerability. If there is one trait that all young people have in common, it is just that: vulnerability. They feel pressure, and judgment, from their peers and adults alike. It is a constant weight of self-doubt and self-criticism propped upon their shoulders. While this vulnerability has been prevalent in each generation of young people, it has been exponentially heightened in this day’s generation. Social media is having an incredibly harmful impact on young people. Social media has created a climate of criticism and torment and, consequently, young people are suffering. While there are many negative effects of social media, its most disturbing effects are threefold: it promotes impractical expectations, allows a platform for torment and harassment, and stunts the progression of adequate social skills among youths. Social media is absolutely detrimental to the mental well-being of young people.

A question the online world is wondering still looms over society like a stormcloud. There is an unsuspected lightning bolt coming down on us that is the consequences of our Internet. What teens and kids are not thinking is that the Internet seems to be hurting us from the inside out, hurting our health, our schooling, and our connections with friends and family. Who are the role models of the Internet, if there are any?

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.

Before the era of social media, vacations got their meaning from the quality of the memories that were brought home; however, with technology and social media becoming increasingly more prevalent in today’s society, this is not the case anymore. With 76% of travelers posting their vacation pictures online through some social media platform, the “success” of a trip is now often defined by the number of “likes” that our posted photos receive (Frenaye). In this new culture of daily-life sharing, society has become addicted to the number of “likes” received; Consequently, there are unmistakable harmful psychological effects that develop in users of social media. Many travel photography accounts on social media, such as @MuradOsmann, create idealized lifestyles that negatively influence others’ self-perception and personal expectations due to frequent comparison to these professionally-edited images that display high economic status and perfect relationships.

Social media has led us to have fewer interactions with people in real life. Many people would rather use social media to communicate with their friends than they would in person, mostly because it makes the communication process easier. More people have become antisocial by spending too much time on social media, and studies show that people have less interest in interacting with other people in their age group and other age groups. Social media is not only decreasing the quality of interactions, but it is also drastically changed the amount of relationships that people have in person as well. Most people have a lack of interest in talking to one another while in person, and it’s been proven that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Cornell University did a study that found that people have a hard time distinguishing between meaningful relationships that they build in the real world and the numerous casual relationships built through social networking sites. Also, allowing social media to prevent you from experiencing genuine human experiences such as spending time with your family or spending time outdoors can be very unhealthy.

Being a student, I guess the penetration rate about the social media for me is almost 100 percent. At least me and my friends use it every day. We probably used it to translate the words or chat with others. Even more, we use it for fun. Everyone use social media. Undisputed, social media is another way for us to keep communicating with each other. However, it could bring the negative and the positive effects for us. According to my personal experience, I think the social media is harmful for the students and It can bring a lot of negative effect for me.

In this technological age, social media has become a vital part of communication between teenagers. Developing friendships is important for a child’s growth, but researchers are questioning if social medial is impeding communication skills are taking away the ability to communicate in real life. Teens are missing opportunities to witness how words and actions affect others to expose them to feelings such as empathy, as texting and online chatting keeps others at a safe distance. Social media can give us a false sense of belonging and connecting that is not build on real-life social exchanges. This makes it increasingly easy to lose oneself to cyberspace connections and replace these online interactions with the good old face to face

Imagine the world without any form of social media: No Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, or Twitter. We would have to stop endlessly scrolling through our feeds. We would not be able to conquer the constant overwhelming urge inside of us that makes social media a popular dependency. We would have to look up from our phones and see the world around us. Our society today solely revolves around the use of social media. Even though social media can be an exciting form of entertainment for many, the amount of hours spent on social networking is clearly unhealthy. Kelly Wallace, a television journalist who reports for CNN, states that “on any given day, teens in the United States spend about nine hours using media for their enjoyment”. On average, teenagers spend sixty-three hours a week on social media and about two hundred and fifty two hours on social media in a typical month. Despite the negative effects of social media, such as cyberbullying, depression, and unrealistic body standards, teenagers keep returning to their favorite apps for entertainment purposes. Disturbing websites and apps can be found on the internet and recent suicides have been linked to the use of social media that have taken place all around the world. In one case, The Blue Whale Challenge has caused over 130 deaths in Russia. The challenge gives unsuspecting people tasks to complete such as cutting your body and watching scary videos. At the end of the challenge, the last task is to commit suicide or else someone would supposedly go and kill the player’s family. Police in the United Kingdom are currently warning parents and children about the dangerous social media phenomenon. Social media can be a great source of communication but is a cruel and menacing commodity when used incorrectly. The increasingly high demand for social media is driving our world into a downward spiral and is creating a cynical environment. The unhealthy addiction to social media is a serious issue that needs to come to an end.

When someone talks about social media people hear a wide platform where one can express himself by sharing his life experiences and his opinions about anything online. Social media is taking over the world, and it is changing how people see the world. Social media such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or Instagram, was made to connect people, but nothing is separating people as social media. Before social media, people used to have physical friends and now all they have is online friends. It is so sad how depression, low self-esteem, obesity and anti-social are increasing a day by a day in our lives due to the social media. Social media is negatively impacting our society.