The Baneful Effects Of Social Media

Social media is a diverse online platform that many use at their advantage. People use it to build social networks as well as social relationships with people who are connected all around the world that desire to share their personal career interests, activities, backgrounds and personal lifestyle. Social media has brought upon mental issues that lead to suicide within our society, affected students in a negative way towards their academics and has caused people to live a fake life by putting on a fake persona that leads to legal trouble.

Although social media can work in a positive way connecting families and people around the world, people still end up significantly being negatively impacted by social networks; many are attached as well as used to working with and using technology on a daily basis… how could it not affect them? We are just zombies living in a digital social world at this point. It is evident that social networks have become part of people's lives due to the many advancements in technology and the peer pressure simply accept it into our lives as something normal.

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Recently, social media use has grown exponentially within our adolescent generations. Social media can offer both advantages and drawbacks towards the health of adolescents. Some negative outcomes from social media use include many things like cyberbullying, educational/mental health issues and privacy concerns. Mental health can be prevented but knowing the negative outcomes of social media makes it a situation that could eventually be dangerous towards our hegemonic society.

Some researchers have associated online social networking with several psychiatric disorders that include depressive symptoms, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Due to the wide range use of online social digital services, society and what it has to offer for their future will always maintain a connection with psychiatric diseases and mental illnesses. This is a very serious public health concern because it can affect the way people think and ruin our future as we become accustomed to it. Social media is an addictive application that causes mental health effects, it is even considered to be dangerous and addictive like drugs.

To begin with, social media affects the mental health of people negatively so much that it led them to literal death. Being exposed to the digital social world is inevitable as also the problems it causes. Society usually praise the wrong influencers that cause these mental issues. The people being idolized create feelings like low self-esteem, depression and even suicidal thoughts. People with insecurities and low self-esteem try to feel better about themselves and get accepted by creating a whole new persona on the digital web. In the journal The role of online social networking on deliberate self-harm and suicidality in adolescents: A systematized review of literature it states, “Simultaneously, age-adjusted suicide rates have steadily increased over the past decade in the United States with suicide being the second most common cause of death in youth.” This source supports the idea that there are people going mad at the hands of the digital world, the suicide rates going up only show that we are becoming attached and letting technology dictate our lives. In addition, that same the scholarly journal mentions, “The role of online social networking on deliberates self-harm and suicidality in adolescents with a focus on negative influence was assessed by conducting a systematized literature review. A literature search on 'PubMed' and 'Ovid Medline' using a combination of MeSH terms yielded nine articles for data extraction satisfying predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria. It was found that social networking websites are utilized by suicidal and self-harming youth as a medium to communicate”. This proves that social media plays a huge role in dictating and controlling people’s lives. The source shows data recorded that unfortunately show social media being one of the top causes of suicide and mental illness. Social media shouldn’t ever be a reason to make a person want to harm themselves, it is a very dangerous powerful platform that can easily affect your life.

Furthermore, Social media has caused our society to live fake lives and get affected by getting in legal trouble through digital platforms. Living a lavish life sounds ideal to anyone, but some people don’t actually have those real luxuries. People online tend to put a fake face towards their social world to show off how “amazing” they’re living but doing this can lead to negative effects in their lives such as legal trouble. In the scholarly journal called Follow Me, What's the Harm: Considerations of Catfishing and Utilizing Fake Online Personas on Social Media it mentions, “Past legal incidents that focus specifically on catfishing, as well as specific laws that could have ramifications on catfishing and fake online personas will be discussed. Finally, the legal considerations that may have a potential effect on the various communication elements within social media platforms”. This goes to show that catfishing a fake life towards your digital use of the internet can affect you in a legal way. People don’t really notice this because they view their posts as unharmful. Possible charges could even lead to identity theft, no one really wants an Instagram post to lead to the downfall of their lives and careers. On that note, living a fake life is also proven to make people feel depressed. It is important to live a real life online and offline; people shouldn’t be pressure to be someone else just because of the influences of others they see on the internet.

In addition, social media can affect a student negatively when it comes to their academics in school. The usage of social media from young students is an everyday thing that students are glued to. Technology has advanced so much that phones are the main technology people use in and out of school. Social media can affect the academic performances of youth and social network sites badly by causing their test scores and GPA’s to drop exponentially. Students don’t see the digital social world as a distraction because of their addiction for it, but sadly the reality is that it’s a heavy chain dragging students towards failure. In the scholarly article called A Meta-analysis of the Relationship of Academic Performance and Social Network Site Among Adolescents and young adults it states, “Further moderation analysis points to test type as an important source of variability in the relationship. We found a negative correlation between SNS-use and GPA”. This proves that social media is directly linked to the downfall of student grades and tests, the negative correlation found in their research also prove that social media is a huge distraction towards students. Having low GPA’s and low-test scores can affect the student’s future, it determines their next move in life (college/career) and something that seems so harmless as social media can ruin that in a second. The digital social world affects student’s GPA’s and test scores negatively, students and parents need to be aware and careful of how dangerously distracting it could be towards their future.

On the contrary, with all the negative effects of social digital platforms there is at least something positive that comes out from it and that is easily being able to connect and communicate with family and friends around the world. Connecting in the digital social world to communicate and socialize with people brings happiness all with the touch of a button. A scholarly journal called Educational Leadership in an Online World: Connecting Students to Technology Responsibly, Safely, and Ethically it mentions, “Technology and social networks can provide a phenomenal avenue for communication and building

student/educator relationships. Students are now able to access these networks in their homes, around the corner and across the world”. This source states that not only is communication easily done in the outside world, but it is also done and used in the schoolwork area making it a huge advantage when it comes to the communication sections that the digital social world has to offer. On the other hand, the negative affects of social media will always linger and overpower the positives. Even though social media comes with the benefit of being connected to people, this constant connection comes with a price of self-actualization. This brings us back to the topic of having a fake persona towards the world. Researchers are learning that social media is causing young users to live up to something they aren’t due to norms in society. In the article Does Social Have A Positive Impact on The World it argues, “A study by researchers at the University of Michigan in 2013 found that college-aged users felt worse the more they used Facebook. Because peoples Facebook personas are often curated to make their lives seem fun or perfect, critics argue, browsing social media can contribute to feelings of inadequacy”. This source is deciphering the true colors of social media and he digital world. The more you use social media and digital technology, the more consumed you get by it. As you observe these social digital sites, you can see millions pulling off false personas. This can affect and make one feel like they aren’t living up to be the best standards, Society constantly compare their lives to what they see on a screen. In doing so, the negative and low self-esteem shape its form into society. Another source that also supports my claim on fake personas is mentioned in the article How Evil Is Tech. It mentions, “Online is a place for exploration but discourages cohesion. It grabs control of your attention and scatters it across a vast range of diverting things”. The constant need to dominate technology causes society to see nonstop redundant posts of people living a lie. Their so-called perfect lives are always seen on a daily, it is now so expected to see how disappointing but normal it is for young people to yearn the life of others they see online. Society is blinded in not knowing the reality of how manipulative these posts are made to make their lives seem luxurious and popular. The digital social world we live in negatively brings us down, these negative affects play a huge toll on how our social digital world can affect us.

In conclusion, the digital social world has many negative effects that brings us down emotionally, mentally, academically and personally. We are so attached to this digital world, that we don’t notice how much it affects us. It may be unavoidable, but it can definitely be controlled by limiting our time on it and raising awareness of the negative affects it has on our lives. As a society we should let social media ruin and dictate our future, we need to push away from the negative digital chains that drag us down and break free from them to become our own owners and controllers of our lives. So, drop the phone and close those social digital apps, get out and raise awareness towards the detrimental effects social media has. You never know, you could be saving someone’s future, be that hero society needs.