5 likes? 10 likes? 100 likes? We all must agree that there was once a time when you were hyperactive about how many “likes” you would receive in the latest photo of your amazing body or your trip to Barcelona or the sports car driving down the road.
As of 2017, an average US citizen spent 140 minutes daily on social media. That is about 10% of our day in the virtual world of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook etc. Similarly, we should undoubtedly, unquestionably agree that social media is consuming our time and our minds extensively and affect us positively and negatively. Right now, it is unavoidable to ignore the fact that social media plays a crucial and essential part of a teenager’s life. 1 out of the 7 minutes spent online by a teenager involves some kind of social networking websites and applications.
Although social media was supposed to be accredited to be enjoyable and poignant, it has many counteractive impacts on a teenager. Firstly, it is a notable cause for distraction. A “ping” on WhatsApp or a “tweet” in Twitter would set off a teenager to check his/her WhatsApp or Twitter. Students are religiously connecting themselves to social networking websites and repeatedly check their online status whenever they have a free time. Even when the students are in class, they open their laptops and spend their valuable energy in the home pages of these websites instead of listening to the lecture. This fractional attention of the students has led them to get disappointing grades which jeopardizes their future careers. Secondly, social media can lead diseases such as eye sight loss, migraines and other things.
Getting to involved in social media can lead to an addiction. This addiction can lead to cyber bullying. Cyberbullying is the use of electronic devices to threaten, humiliate or terrorize another person. Cyberbullying is very common these days. Students and other young adults use inappropriate profanities to abuse their friends due to jealousy, insecurity, or just for fun.
Sometimes these lifeless, lethargic people post embarrassing photos of their friends without their consent to “expose” them into the virtual world. The person in the photo feel downhearted and this leads to rivalries and sometimes to death. A case in 2011 lead a girl to commit suicide because she sent a nude photo to her boyfriend who in turn posted it in Instagram.
Thirdly, social media encourages to the consumption of drugs, alcohols, and other intoxicant just for the sheer number of likes and the “coolness”. “Recent studies show that 75% of teenagers seeing photos on social networks of other teens smoking weed or drinking encourages them to party in the same way.” These photos and videos the teenagers post results in more attention from peers which leads them to do more of it. After a certain period, the teen cannot let go the addicted drugs which ultimately results into death. On the contrary, social media has also some positive impacts. On of them being communication.
In the ancient era, it took a long time to communicate from one place to another. Today it takes few milliseconds to communicate another person who is sitting 7451 miles away from you. Social media has advanced a lot. The first type of social networking created was Email, which was invented in 1975.
Since then it has advanced a lot to today with the introduction of Snapchat, Hike, Tumblr etc. Secondly social media rewrote the definition of entertainment. Sites such as Netflix, YouTube helps us kill our time. Television shows and programs that are not being broadcasted in the local channels, can be viewed online. This helped online tv shows such as 13 Reasons Why,Game of Thrones, Strangers things etc. to be generated and today they are in the number one spot of the most tv shows watched around the world. To sum up, social media has changed our life significantly. Our life has become more convenient due to social media.
On the contrary, we must be more knowledgeable on how to operate them. If it is used correctly, then social media would have a commendable and exceptional change in our life.
