Effects of Social media

                                                             Effects of Social media 

                                                                 

Social media and social networking seems to play an imperative part of people lives around the world. There are some who debate whether it is improving or crippling communication skills. Sitting behind a computer communicating with cyber friends can be easy and fun but can weaken a person's verbal communication skills. According to various research studies in the field of online social networks, it has been revealed that these sites are impacting the lives of the youth greatly. With the many rapid advances being made in technology and the internet, people express concern for the future of society as a whole. 

Many people argue that theoretically, social media is having a negative impact on youth (typically teenagers) by decreasing the amount of social interaction, whereas others are in disbelief of the “decreasing” amount of social interaction amongst youth. Self-identities play a big role in social interaction, yet a person’s self-identity is partially derived from social media. One’s self-identity is developed by self-awareness and gaining feedback on achievements. With the recent invention of social media, people are tending to base their identities solely off of the latest trends over social media, and the blatant image of the “perfect person” that has undermined every positive self-images of oneself. Whether it is “the perfect body-image” or “the perfect personality” being propelled towards people, many people feel the lack of confidence which degrades their self-image. 

Before social media’s existence, many people lacked these degrading feelings of self-image, yet the tide has turned. Society is now incessantly veered to the prominent teaching that self-image is the very basis of humans, and if one has an inferior self-image, that person is inferior to society. Subsequently, there becomes a loss of identity when one becomes wrapped up in “all the hype” on supposedly Facebook or Instagram. Society as a whole is not perceiving the detrimental outcome of the negative brainwashing social media can have on people. Society has simply become immune to popular influences and believes that the way of popular self-image pertains to what each individual’s self-image should be. “Self-identity is no longer self-identity, meaning derived from the self, but rather is an identity projected onto us by popular culture and in no way an accurate reflection of who we really are” (Taylor). When using these sites such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace, there are both positive and negative effects on the youth. Websites such as Facebook makes communication with others an easy task. Facebook improved communication and even made communication a better experience. Facebook allow people to share photos, post comments, and view people’s personal information. With almost 500 million users’ accounts, facebook is considered to be one of the most popular social media websites; most of the people use it as a substitute for real life human interaction.  According to Forbes, there are about 1 billion social media accounts all over the world, these accounts makes almost all of the countries of the world connected with each other.