Effects of Social media
Social media seamlessly connects us with the rest of the world , they have many different uses, they can deliver us news and they allow us to keep in touch and feel closer to our friends and the people we love. They are being used for dating and they can make the user look a lot more attractive and interesting than they actually are. Also it doesn't cost us "money". But like with most things that are too good to be true, social media too comes with many drawbacks.
Social media, It has become an obsession and an addiction. What is the first thing a person does when they wake up? For a huge number of people now its checking social media. Social media is a pretty new concept to our world and by the looks of it, its here to stay. But we are not recognizing all the negative effects its having on the users. There is lots of different ones out there, but only a lucky few get big, and for the most part they don't stay big for too long. Feel free to make comparisons to entertainers, artists or even pastimes. Every month theres a new popular version of them in the market, adding to the already large amount of hours people spend on social media.
Lets start with why they are "free". They are free and remain free using different methods, a lot of their revenue comes from advertisers, which for the most part people are ok with, an ad on the side of your screen usually won't drive people away .The other is the selling of your information and data to companies. So the user is working for them without realizing it., Free labor. As an owner of a company can you think of many better things than that?
Without realizing it social media has in a way been doing the opposite of bringing us closer in the real world. Instead of interacting with people in person we resort to using social media to interact. This leads to not properly developing real world social skills. "Awkward moments" apparently everyone has five of them everyday now. Probably because the art of conversation is dying. When chatting on the internet one is almost never required to answer back on the spot, you have time to think and come up with the most suitable answers. Going on a date, will the user have two whole minutes to come up with an answer that will make him seem like the same silver tongued individual he has been during his conversations online? Or going to an interview, will the young man whose not used to real world interactions feel comfortable responding to his employer in real time, with virtually no time to think? These are only a few examples, but our social skills face to face have been slowly deteriorating since we've started using.
One of the biggest uses of social media is for dating, according to Nielsen, " active adult networkers are forty five percent more likely to go on a date" this too can present many problems. In the past we mostly met people in person and sometimes through friends, but now were meeting their online profile. An online profile is not the actual person we end up meeting though, in a persons online profile you see that persons optimal representation of themselves. You will get something along the lines of : " I like traveling, going to interesting places to eat, and I love basketball" As opposed to "I like traveling, going to interesting places to eat, I love basketball, and also I've been divorced three times (because I cheated on 2 of them), that picture of me in the beach house in the Caribbean is my cousin Jimmy's house not mine (I live with my parents) lastly that picture was taken 10 months ago, I weigh 35 pounds more now" you will never get the whole picture. When meeting the actual person behind the profile one is usually disillusioned. Dating used to mean taking time in knowing a person, and discovering all of their interests, passions and even faults and quirks slowly, we "sipped" the information in, now we know virtually everything about them before even meeting them, leaving no room for the relationships to grow.
Social media is also bringing a lot additional anxieties into our lives, and making a lot of people feel worse about themselves. It will sound silly , but people have developed new fears, for example having an unflattering picture of them posted online can bring them a great deal of anxiety and sorrow, or even just the fact of knowing an unflattering picture of them was taken will have the same unpleasant effects. Studies show that social media makes a lot of people have even lower self esteem due to constantly comparing their lives to their peer's, making them feel like their own life isn't as interesting or fun. If a users post doesn't get the amount of attention as their friends they also tend to feel worse about themselves.
Another negative aspect of social media is that it gives bullies easy means to publicly humiliate their victims. The exchange of insults and derogatory terms is often exchanged on these sites . A lot of the time they do this knowing that there will be no real repercussions because they are outside of school or their workplace environment. On some sites where there is more anonymity bullies will often be even more hateful and make harsher comments, as opposed to holding back because on another social media service their true identity would be revealed.
When people are spending over 20% of their time everyday on such sites, it raises the question of how much interference does social media have with productivity and quality of life. They have brought a new age of anxiety and depression, they have become great distractions, these distractions have caused GPA's and work rates to go down drastically . Even when we know all these negative aspects of social media we continue our behavior. The reason is addiction.
Tyler, Savage. Personal Interview. 13 October 2013
Pokin, Helen A.S. "We Spent 230,060 Years on Social Media in one Month" Cnbc. Jim Pavia. NBC Universal inc.,4 December 2012. Web. 8 November 2013.
State of the Media: The Social Media Report Q3 2011
One of the biggest uses of social media is for dating, according to Nielsen, " active adult networkers are forty five percent more likely to go on a date" this too can present many problems. In the past we mostly met people in person and sometimes through friends, but now were meeting their online profile. An online profile is not the actual person we end up meeting though, in a persons online profile you see that persons optimal representation of themselves. You will get something along the lines of : " I like traveling, going to interesting places to eat, and I love basketball" As opposed to "I like traveling, going to interesting places to eat, I love basketball, and also I've been divorced three times (because I cheated on 2 of them), that picture of me in the beach house in the Caribbean is my cousin Jimmy's house not mine (I live with my parents) lastly that picture was taken 10 months ago, I weigh 35 pounds more now" you will never get the whole picture. When meeting the actual person behind the profile one is usually disillusioned. Dating used to mean taking time in knowing a person, and discovering all of their interests, passions and even faults and quirks slowly, we "sipped" the information in, now we know virtually everything about them before even meeting them, leaving no room for the relationships to grow.
Social media is also bringing a lot additional anxieties into our lives, and making a lot of people feel worse about themselves. It will sound silly , but people have developed new fears, for example having an unflattering picture of them posted online can bring them a great deal of anxiety and sorrow, or even just the fact of knowing an unflattering picture of them was taken will have the same unpleasant effects. Studies show that social media makes a lot of people have even lower self esteem due to constantly comparing their lives to their peer's, making them feel like their own life isn't as interesting or fun. If a users post doesn't get the amount of attention as their friends they also tend to feel worse about themselves.
Another negative aspect of social media is that it gives bullies easy means to publicly humiliate their victims. The exchange of insults and derogatory terms is often exchanged on these sites . A lot of the time they do this knowing that there will be no real repercussions because they are outside of school or their workplace environment. On some sites where there is more anonymity bullies will often be even more hateful and make harsher comments, as opposed to holding back because on another social media service their true identity would be revealed.
When people are spending over 20% of their time everyday on such sites, it raises the question of how much interference does social media have with productivity and quality of life. They have brought a new age of anxiety and depression, they have become great distractions, these distractions have caused GPA's and work rates to go down drastically . Even when we know all these negative aspects of social media we continue our behavior. The reason is addiction.
Tyler, Savage. Personal Interview. 13 October 2013
Pokin, Helen A.S. "We Spent 230,060 Years on Social Media in one Month" Cnbc. Jim Pavia. NBC Universal inc.,4 December 2012. Web. 8 November 2013.
State of the Media: The Social Media Report Q3 2011
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