Social Media: more Harmful than Helpful

Imagine being a seventeen year old teenager, waking up to a phone full of disturbing messages. You go on Facebook to find that your ex-boyfriend posted your nudes because you wouldn't take him back. Everybody on the internet is talking about it, screenshotting it and making statuses about you. You feel so humiliated you attempt to kill yourself. Imagine that story being real because it is, that girl was a close friend of mine. Social media ruin lives.

Social media was a great thing at one point in time, it has a few pros. However, the bad out-weighs the good. Social media is a tool of destruction, it is significantly one of the breeding sources for cyber bullying, it causes tremendous amounts of low self-esteem and lastly because of social media it results in less face to face human interaction.

Cyber-bullying is a form of bullying used through electronics such as cellular devices, computers and any other devices that uses the internet to intimidate or threaten someone. According to Cyber bullying statistics from the i-SAFE foundation, over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and about the same number have engaged in cyber bullying. The internet can be ruthless. Users of social media tend to overlook that words do hurt. I have been an observer and an unfortunate casualty to cyberbullying. I have seen the impacts that it can have on the people who are victims. According to the Hastac Cyber bullying and Social Media article, there are about 4,400 cases of victims who have committed suicide due to cyberbullying.

4,400 are way too many deaths for cyberbullying to not be as adknowledgeable. Honestly, it breaks my heart knowing that victims can get to that point to where they want to end their life. I sympathyize with them because I have faced a form of cyberbullying myself. I wasn't upset because of what was said, but because of who all seen it. It is humiliating when someone airs out your business. The thing is that whatever you post on social media good or bad will follow you forever, even if you delete, it's never really gone. Social media cites like Twitter and Facebook you don't even have to follow or be friends with the person to see their profiles. According to Rampage The Negative Impacts of Social Media on Face to Face Interactions, teens say cruel behavior happens 23.8% on Twitter, 92.6% on Facebook, 14.2% on instant messenger and 17.7% on Myspace. I feel as if most people gain confidence over social media because it allows you to reveal what you choose to. There had been plenty occasions where I've seen people I went to school with pretend to be someone they really aren't on social media. It is sad to see that non-sense. You can point out the people that insecure because they continuously bash others to feel good about their selves.

According to the Clarissa Silver Social Media's Impact on Self-Esteem, social media has been linked to higher levels of loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression and narcissism. Studies show 60% of people using social media has reported that it has impacted their self-esteem in a negative way. I've seen it first hand, women try so hard to get the hour glass figure because most the celebrities have it. Women spend so much money on plastic surgery just to try to catch men attention, to feel excepted and beautiful. Recently, I seen a thicker-women post a picture on Twitter and thousands of people bashed her. She later tweeted that she took the picture down because of how everyone came at her throat because she wasn't the ideal shape. Clarissa Silva has this theory called the Slot Machine Effect. Clarissa says the slot machine effect is when we receive a like or a comment to a post, or when we come across an interesting new post from someone else, we experience what psychologists refer to as intermittent reinforcement.

According to Clarissa Silva Social Media's Impact On Self-Esteem, it states that 51% of people say social media has made them feel more self-conscious about their appearance. In fact, it says research has shown that Facebook users are becoming increasingly depressed from comparing themselves to their own profile. Implying that if their existence does not coordinate the advanced hallucination they post on their profiles, one may feel they are not satisfying the "best" type of themselves." Emotionally secure individuals tend to not battle with these insecurities.

Albert Einstein once said I fear the day that technology will surpass our human race interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots. It is clear social media is one of the major causes of less face to face human interaction in today's society. The more people use their cell phones the higher the percentage for less face to face interaction rises. It's easier to communicate with people through social media than in person because it easier. However, this creates an antisocial individual. According to Rampage The Negative Impacts of Social Media on Face-to-Face Interactions, The world has changed into a society that is complacent sitting behind our computer screens. Social media is a leading cause of this complacency. A prime example of this is my two year old sister Trinity. Trinity loves her tablet, she literally knows how to go on You-Tube and find the children videos herself. The crazy part is she will legit tune everybody out, she will ignore you. I could call her name and she act like she doesn't hear a thing.

The quality of face to face interactions is decreasing as well. Unfortunately, this is sadly true, I can admit when my boyfriend and I go out on dates we sometimes take moments on our phones instead of enjoying each-others company. There's also this big thing about online dating which is weird to me because everybody has seen the show Catfish, so I don't understand how people still get catfished and how they can fall in love online. Decreased language skills are also a factor in social media. Everyone used slang language as a way of expression instead of the proper English language. According to Rampage The Negative Impacts of Social Media on Face to Face Interactions, experts believe that people are beginning to mix their business and personal relationship language guidelines, which can lead to serious issues with coworkers. Social media may also be the cause to some individuals having less manners when interacting.

The counter-argument is that without social media we wouldn't be able to contact our loved ones that are long distanced. Without social media it would be extremely hard to keep up with our loved one's special occasions. Such as a niece or nephew first talent show or our baby cousin taking their first steps.

The truth is social media is more of a danger than a helpful tool. We as humans have used and abused the system for the worse and it is impacting us in numerous of ways. As individuals we should try to reduce our screen time and physically visit one another. I understand that facetime is convenient, but we have to do better as a whole so we can make these statistics decrease.

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