Solving the Social Media Usage Issue

Social media was created to further the future in technological excellence. It was created to, simply, make our lives easier than previous. It has become very helpful with communicating with others without having to be there in person. This is a wonderful concept for businesses and companies alike, having to only have a decent internet connection to hold a meeting of great importance. It is inexpensive and easy to use once directed how. However, with the pros comes some cons. Social media is not only being used by companies and businesses, but they are being used by younger and older generations for entertainment purposes. Applications such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube are just a few of the entertainment services. These services are being used way too much, and are the main focus of the younger generations who grow up with this technology. Instead of using their brains, the younger generations are depending on this new technology to solve their real life problems. Humanity is becoming more and more dependant on technology and it is only going to grow.

Numerous amounts of social media applications are sprouting up every second in app stores for all phones, tablets, etc. Every moment, there is someone picking up their phone to either call, text, post something on social media, or even to only scroll through these applications to keep themselves entertained. Social media tends to drag people in and almost hypnotizes them into a trance they cannot escape with encouragement from outside sources, such as parents in cases with children and young teens. Social media use needs to be limited with multiple methods, such as limiting the younger generations use of the technology, reducing the amount of time should be allowed on an platform, and divert the attention of the person back to something better in their life.

In terms of social media use, the first group everyone tends to see is the younger generations, young children and young adults. Depending on the application, there is a higher percentage being used by the younger generations. For example, a platform like Snapchat would be more popular among the age group of 18 to 24. It is a very low percentage with it comes to the older generations, around the ages 30 to 50+ (Smith). The younger generations are a very large percentage of the data collected for platforms that are newer, as well. These applications include Youtube at 94%, Instagram at 71%, and Facebook at 80% (Smith). In all, younger generations are responsible for most of the percentages of usage, however, they are not the only ones accumulating the total usage.

The older generation is also a factor in rising rates of social media usage. It may not be on the same level as the younger generation, but they definitely add to the total amount. When Facebook was created in 2004, it became the largest known social media to be used of that year, and years to come (The history of social media: Social networking evolution!). Today, Facebook is still the largest social media website on the internet, having a wide range of people using it, coming from multiple states, countries, and continents. This website would set the bar for all other platforms to come (The history of social media: Social networking evolution!). Back in 2004, the generation at the time would be the ones attracted to this new piece of technology, since MySpace, Six Degrees, and AOL. Its popularity skyrocketed and, since then, has been the largest populated social media website. It would only make sense that older generations would be attracted to this website since it has the old concepts of starting online platforms. It is a simplistic forum that even the oldest grandparents can navigate with a little bit of guidance. However, this does not mean that the emotions of the ones using these platforms are exactly happy. Social media can affect the emotional balance of human's brains, and cause them to feel overstressed or overjoyed depending on the post (Lin 2017). However, this is only a total statistic for Facebook, however this does not equal the entire life that is on the internet.

All of the internet runs on statistics, including how many people of the internet use social media. Facebook has the highest rate of usage on mobile phones at 90.6%, Instagram is the second with 62.8%, Facebook messenger is third with 59.6%, and the fourth is Twitter at 37.7% (Most popular mobile social networking apps in the united states as of july 2018). These statistics show that users are using this social media as a whole, and continue to use it as the years go on. Before these were taken this year, last years statistics were even less. This shows that the younger generations are making themselves known on these platforms, and using these a lot more frequently than the older generations are. To solve the over usage of social media, there is a solution that could work with all of the generations.

For all the generations, there should be a way to turn off these platforms after a certain number of hours/minutes so the person using the application can finish what they were doing prior to getting hypnotized into the app. If an adult has to do something for their business or their job, or if a child has to do homework, the device should be able to block them from using it until after they complete their assignment, or until the time can be renewed on the device for another session of social media use. This would insure that the time used normally for playing on social media will

The only time where social media could be used constantly is if a business has to connect with another for meetings or sharing details with each other. For example, a company selling paper to a client overseas will have to use some sort of social platform to communicate. A Skype call would be sufficient in this communication process. Only then can the method be vanquished. Without social media, these companies would not be able to communicate to exchange goods. Without companies exchanging goods, there would be no product to buy in any country around the world. Companies not using social media would make it incredibly difficult for products to be distributed throughout the countries.

In conclusion, the concept of not using so much social media does not sound all bad. It would provide the people who use it constantly for entertainment time to focus on what is important in their lives, such as work or education.

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