Some Effects of Social Media
Social media is a medium that allows people to communicate and share information using a computer or a mobile phone, such as websites and computer programs. Notably, social media took a series of lifetimes to take the shape it has developed.
According to Jon Allan’s contribution to Future Marketing, one of the first forms of social media in the late 1970s is Bulletin board systems, first introduced in 1988, followed by Sixdegrees, launched in 1997, from 1997 to 2001, sites, where users can create profiles and add friends took over.
Later in modern social life, Friendster, founded in 2002, was the first properly considered social platform. Afterwards, LinkedIn came in 2003, Hi5, and finally Facebook, launched in Harvard in 2004, became the most famous platform in 2008. MySpace subsequently appeared in 2004, followed by YouTube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, and eventually, Instagram in 2010.
Despite social media becoming an inevitable tool for education, marketing, and business, as emphasized by the University of Cumbria, it resulted in seriously grave negative effects.
Social media can dangerously manipulate our communicative nature as human beings, and affect teenagers’ physical as well as mental health, not to mention how time-consuming it can become.
Consequently, this paper aims to elaborate on the negative effects of social media, while pursuing a psychological approach alongside Look Up, a poem by Gary Turk in 2014, to emphasize the elaboration through rhyme.
The so-called ‘Social’ media
We need the companionship of others to flourish because humans are social creatures. Even if social media can help connect people, it is important to note that it can just as well keep them apart, which is evident in the loss of face-to-face communication.
As we see groups of people sitting together, each one of them engrossed in their smartphone constantly scrolling and scrolling through their news feed.
Hence, young teenagers nowadays find it harder to communicate, which in turn may affect the demands of their future careers, if not the interview. We can trace back such a dilemma in Turk’s poem…
“All this technology we have, it’s just an illusion
Community companionship, a sense of inclusion
Yet when you step away from this device of delusion.
You awaken to see a world of confusion.” (Turk, lines 9–12)
As earlier noted, social media can manipulate the user into believing it is connecting them with the world, when in fact it is anything but social. Since social media can be manipulative, users end up thinking it is making them less isolated. As noted in the following verse…
“We pretend not to notice the social isolation.” (Turk, line 22)
However, according to a study done at the University of Pennsylvania, social media causes the user to feel lonely and depressed, whereas limiting the user’s social media usage can make them feel less so and improves their well-being.
Nevertheless, using social media to maintain your connections with others and connect with people who inspire you or share your interests can be one of the ways to combat the less face-to-face communication issue, but it does not suffice as a replacement.
Even so, we will still have to deal with the harmful physical effects of social media as well as how negatively it affects mental health.
Harmful social media and teenagers
As briefly mentioned, social media can affect teenagers. For instance, teenagers can be distracted, anxious, exposed to bullying as well as self-absorption, disturbed sleep, and peer pressure.
Evidently, a 2019 study done in England concluded that using social media frequently results in poor mental health and well-being in teenagers.
Notably, the Royal Society for Public Health conducted a survey inquiring directly about how social media platforms impacted the health and well-being of teenagers and found that it made them feel depressed, anxious, and lonely, and made them think poorly about their bodies.
Moreover, teenagers deal with cyberbullying more often than they care to admit. Accordingly, many social media users are subject to offensive comments, rumours, and lies, all of which emotionally scar the user.
“A world of self interest, self image, self promotion” (Turk, line 15)
As noted from the previous verse, teenagers tend to share endless selfies and personal thoughts all the time, which in turn forms self-centeredness and eventually, they distance themselves from real-life connections.
Additionally, the worse the quality of sleep, the higher the levels of anxiety and depression get. Furthermore, teenagers tend to prioritize digital world interactions over real-world interactions. As Turk emphasizes, in the following lines…
“This digital world, we are heard but not seen.
Where we type as we talk, and we read as we chat
Where we spend hours together without making eye contact.” (Turk, lines 81–83)
In fact, teenagers can become so absorbed in their digital world that they start stressing about missing out on the good things happening in the social media world and that maybe others are out there having more fun than they are, which results in lower self-esteem, more social media craving, and higher levels of anxiety.
Most of the previous issues can be minimized by spending less time on social media, establishing quality time with family, and parents monitoring their teenager's accounts. However, social media cravings can cause serious problems if not addressed, resulting in major consequences.
Craving time wasting
Social media cravings can become addicting to the point where the user becomes helplessly attached and unable to make time for anything else. As Turk elaborates in the following verse…
“Being alone isn’t a problem, let me just emphasize
If you read a book, paint a picture, or do some exercise
You’re being productive and present, not reserved and recluse
You’re being awake and attentive and putting your time to good use.”
(Turk, lines 25–28)
The main point is to put one’s time to good use because social media can be quite time-consuming.
Evidently, the University of Maryland did a study, where 200 of their students were asked to not access any means of social media for a day and when asked how it felt during this brief disconnection, the students’ descriptions of cravings, anxiety, and jitters reflected the symptoms of people who were withdrawing drug or alcohol addiction.
Social media addiction can affect the flow of a person’s daily life, causing many unnecessary hindrances to how they go about spending their time.
Accordingly, human beings have fundamental needs to belong, be understood, and relate which can be fulfilled through human relations because interacting with people makes all the difference as noted by Turk…
“Take in your surroundings, make the most of today
Just one real connection is all it can take
To show you the difference that being there can make.” (Turk, lines 49–52)
Finally, Turk emphasizes that we are humans, thus our lives are limited and wasting our time looking down at some invention will result in a bitter feeling of regret…
“We have a finite existence, a set number of days
Don’t waste your life getting caught in the net,
As when the end comes nothing’s worse than regret.” (Turk, lines 76–78)
In summary, social media came to have many negative aspects because people grew more addicted to spending time on it and Gary Turk elaborated on many of those negative aspects in his poem Look Up.
The negative effects of social media eventually resulted in issues with the physical as well as mental health of those who use it frequently. Also, social media was invented to bring people together, but it ended up distancing them from those around them.
In addition to social distancing, people started confusing their priorities, wasting their time, and becoming more and more stressed because of an invention that was created to make things easier for them in the first place.
Nevertheless, dealing with many of those negative aspects begins with limiting the time spent on social media, then replacing it with real face-to-face communication, and attempting productive time-filling activities.
