Is
Social Media a Negative Phenomenon?
In today’s
generation social media is a way of life and the access into a life you’ve always
wanted. Although many of the social media
outlets have many positive qualities such as the ability to obtain informative instantaneously
and the wide varieties of communication, the negative qualities outshine the
positive. From Twitter to Facebook to YouTube the negative effects such as:
Communication, Privacy, and Social Anxiety seem to tarnish the attributes that
many feel Social Media brings.
The first
way that Social Media is hindering our abilities is through communication. Before
everything was at our fingertips and we could over share to the world, people
would have long, face-to-face discussions with their friends and family. Now
that we live in a world with Twitter and Facebook people have lost their social
skills and their ability to hold their attention for more than 10 seconds. The way
teens talk has been molded by the way that they interact through these social
media sites. Through Twitter, teens have learned how to condense their stories
and life into 160 characters or less, which has led to more frequent use of “textspeak”
or abbreviated words. And that the abbreviated words that teens use have become
a language all of their own, the term “LOL” which means laugh out loud may also
be used at the end of a tweet or text message to convey a light-heartedness to
the message. Another way that social media has interfered with our
communication skills would be demonstrated through our inability to have a
conversation with others face to face. People my age have found a way to use emoticons
to express their emotions over these outlets instead of showing them and also
fully feeling them. Teen’s incapability to decipher human social cues like sarcasm,
tone of voice, and even facial expressions shows how deprived this generation
is from meaningful communication.
The second
short-coming that social media has is the lack of privacy. What with everyone’s
life being displayed on a large platform it is easy for their lives to be examined
with a fine-tooth comb as well. Privacy on these social Medias has become a
thing of the past, people “creep” on others to find out information that they
would have never found out otherwise not including a conversation. This can be
dangerous because it allows strangers to know intimate details about you and take
advantage of that. “Catfish” a television show on MTV is about how people will
make up online profiles and identities to get to know other people intimately and
lie to them about who they really are through Facebook and Instant Messages. Just
like “Catfish” people can use your information to try to find out more about
you or even track you down, whether you want to be found or not. Another way
your privacy is being invaded by these sites is that you have the feeling that
you constantly have to check-in on your social media pages to let everyone know
where you are and you have to share every picture that you look semi cute in
which can hurt your future plans because once those things are online they will
be there forever and may hurt your professional image that you are trying to
build.
Although many
wouldn’t believe that social anxiety can be caused from social media sites, it
is. Kids all over the world sign into their pages and have legitimate fear and
anxiety from what they might see on their walls or timelines. Cyber bullying
has become a huge phenomenon for this generation; kids, teens, and even some
adults have been victims of cruel cyber bullying. As people are using their
social media sites throughout the day, informing those that they know and the
occasional celebrity that they hope will retweet something witty they said they
have a constant fear before they post something; on whether it is good enough,
if people will understand it, if it’s to lame. Those fears then manifest
themselves into their everyday lives in the real world like when they are doing
presentations, they feel that they could have thought of something better to do
or say. Another social display that could lead to social anxiety is “Sexting.” Sexting
is where one sends or receives inappropriate photos. This could be detrimental
to the stability of a person, if one sees an explicit photo of themselves being
passed around from social network to social network it could utterly destroy
the person and lead to more serious problems just like cyber bullying could
lead to. Because people have less of social awareness as they used to they feel
that what they are doing is normal and that because what they are doing the
person is not to their face it is less of a severe joke, which is why social
media sites are dangerous for people of all ages.
Social
media sites like Twitter and Facebook have negative effects on people
throughout this world because no matter where you are from things people do and
say can hurt you. Social media has proven to be a downfall for meaningful communication
in the way that we don’t know how to pick up on social cues as well as other
generations do, our lives have been cut down to fit into our tweets, and that
we are unable to fully commit to conversations without getting completely
distracted. We also found that through social media outlets our privacy is no
longer ours and that any person from anywhere in the world could find out any
information that they wanted and that they could also lie about whom they are
and infiltrate your life. The last negative affect from Social Media that we
talked about was how using the internet for your own selfish gain, to be cruel
or manipulate someone could cause severe social anxiety.
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