One of the most breathtaking breakthroughs in technology, which made life easier, distance shorter and communication faster is the invention of the many kinds of social media; it is becoming an inevitable component in the lives of billions of people all around the globe. If it wasn’t for social media, communication would remain hard to achieve, and messages would take hours to reach their destination.
The role social media plays in connecting people is indescribable: simply all you need is to press few buttons, so that you can easily connect with people of different educational and cultural back ground and personal experience from all over the world.
Moreover, social media tremendously facilitated announcement and press release. companies can advertise their products using this medium, so that it can reach to billions of people with in fraction of seconds; similarly news agencies can easily reach the mass in a simple, yet effective way.
The other merit of social media is in connecting people of same interest irrespective of the distance between them; one example of this is, the groups created in facebook. One can create any group he/she wishes based on his/her personal interest, so that people with similar interest can join that particular group and share ideas.
At times i am bewildered by the swiftness of the “messege delivery” in social media. Have you realized how instant it is? This speedy communication made life easier and saved large amount of money and energy.
But Alas! When we compare the benefits with the demerits, the demerits outweigh the advantages; infact, there are potential dangers in using social media that need to be dealt with.
The obvious harmful effect is, the fact that, it is so addictive. We get so attached to it that we can’t even spend a day with out checking our account. Once, we get used to it, it becomes so hard to get out of it which i want to call it: “cyber shackle”. Experts have not been in total agreement on whether internet addiction is a real thing, let alone social media addiction, but there’s some good evidence that both may exist.
And, as some symptoms of addiction are manifested in excessive users of social media we can confidently group it as a psychological problem (addiction problem).
A review study from Nottingham Trent University looked back over earlier research on the psychological characteristics, personality and social media use. The authors conclude that, “it may be plausible to speak specifically of ‘Facebook Addiction Disorder’…because addiction criteria, such as neglect of personal life, mental preoccupation, escapism, mood modifying experiences, tolerance and concealing the addictive behavior, appear to be present in some people who use [social media] excessively.”
This addiction has its own dire consequences. In the first place, it is time consuming: which means you spend hours sitting in front of computer screens or smart phones. In most cases this idle sitting makes you to pay a price for other activities that you are supposed to do. In addition, simply sitting for hours to use social media brings some health problems which are caused due to luck of physical excersice.
There is also another detrimental result of social media, that is, comparing yourself with others. While you were scrolling down in your news feed (in facebook) or viewing photos in instagram, you might see some one you know enjoying a fancy vacation in the Bahamas, Mombasa or Gergsum beach or he/she posted a photo wearing expensive quality brand clothes, or probably you see some one’s post bragging about his/her success in life; in this case what you naturally feel is, jealousy or an invidious feeling. Such things will also cause inferiority complex and severely affect the persons self-esteem.
I wished these were the only problems of social media, but alas!, there are a lot more, about which people should be alerted. The most destructive one i believe is, the spread of false, deceptive, blasphemous informations and baseless rumours along with bad news faster than a wild fire: which mostly is the result of absence of filters.
In addition, the emotional loss, which is afflicted to others by people with fake accounts is alarmingly dangerous. I remember a pathetic story, which is shared by an Ethiopian girl, who was deceived and gruesomely manipulated by an unknown person with a fake social media account. The worst is, the exposition of some personal information such as telephon number and email address, which are highly required, when a person is creating social media account, affords an avenue to be a victim of cyber crime. Recently, a friend of mine told me about a guy, who called and verbally harassed her; guess where he got her number from, of course from one of her social media account probably facebook.
The detrimental results of social media are so numerous, that it is impossible to mention all in one article; and i believe that one can write a book about this topic. But finally i would like to mention one more demerit of social media. It is the pseudo sense of belief of being social or they consider themselves as socially active, merely because they have great number of virtual friends in facebook or other social media. Such a belief is not witty and critical at all, rather it childish.
Finally, despite the side effects of social media, which outweigh its benefits, i never suggest total abstinence or quiting it. Rather, i would advise people to use it in moderation. Moderate use is the unparalleled solution for many problems not only in social media; after all, too much of everything is bad. Besides, taking a break for certain period of time, from using social media is also beneficial to boost your psychological well being. And i believe that, unfollowing some of your Facebook friends, who continuously brag about themselves might help in alleviating the pain of inferiority complex; in addition, unfriending some useless friends from your friends list, is also helpful.
Otherwise, if we simply stick to it and if we allow it to ruin our life, it will no longer be a blessing but a curse, albeit we get some benefits from it.
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