What is Social media? Social media is a virtual interactive platform mediated by computer-based technologies. This facilitates the sharing of knowledge, information, and ideas. Social media users access social media services on their desktop, laptops, and smartphones. Social media is quite different from other media platforms like paper (newspapers and magazines), TV and radio in the sense that there is an effective and fast interaction than the former.
The negative effect of social media
The negative impacts of Social Media are being discussed everywhere these days. Social media has become omnipresent since the arrival of cheap smartphone technology. Anyone with a smartphone has access to the internet these days and consequentially to social media.
Everyone likes to be connected socially so as not to miss out on anything ‘happening’ on these platforms. On the one hand, it has made the world much smaller, on the other hand, there are negative consequences arising out of it.
The negative effects include:
- Life has become more virtual – Everyone likes to meet each other electronically rather than face to face. Even in a real meeting, it is not uncommon to see people switching to their phones after initial greetings.
- It is very easy to spread rumors – Since the source of the rumours can hardly be traced, it becomes an easy channel to spread rumors, even hate messages and false stories and interpretation of events. The effects can be very severe.
- Little time for pursuits of true value – People love to take their own pictures in the best possible settings all dressed up. They spend too much time on their appearance and presentation virtually with little time left for pursuits of true
- Inflated sense of self-importance– People are increasingly moving towards name-dropping, showing off their vacation destinations and what food they eat daily and all this to no meaningful purposes other than to assert their self-importance.
- Cyberbullying – Cyberbullying is a very dangerous act and might lead to depression.
- Addiction – Especially for students, it will reduce their class activities.
Though, social media has done a lot of harm, we can’t overlook the importance of Social media at the same time. After all, it was intended to provide a common social platform, and it is up to every individual to strike a balance between and keep the harmful effects on the society out.