The Negative Effects of Social Media on Modern Day Society (Essay Sample)

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Negative Effects of Social Media
Social media refers to computer-mediated devices that allow individuals to create, exchange and share information on different topics of interests. It can be also referred to as a group-based internet applications that create technological and ideological foundations of Web and that allow people to generate and exchange their content. Over the recent years, social media has experienced a drastic change, and almost every person has access to social media worldwide. This has enhanced communication of people throughout the world thus making it a global village. The media allows socialization among peer groups, and it is used to market and influence individuals to be part of the larger global community (Thevenot, 287-298). Social media has significantly changed the manner in which people communicate and share information in a different setting, and it impacts on people’s lives either positively or negatively. Many websites offer communication via use of YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace and many other blog sites. Therefore, this paper is going to highlight and debate on the negative impacts of social media on people of different ages and groups.
Social media impacts negatively on kids, adolescents and teenagers. When these group of minors gets access to social media, they are likely to get content that might blow their minds and thought. The social media is open to obscene images and videos like drug abuse and pornography that the young people can easily get access. This might lead them to engage in irresponsible behaviors like drugs abuse and sex without their knowledge on the side effects that might befall them. This poses a great challenge for parents who are supposed to raise the kids in a way that they do not fall into bad peer influence.
Also, social media decreases productivity in businesses. As many companies are embracing social networking to communicate and find new customers for their services and products, it is turning out to disrupt employees’ concentration from their roles. For instance, when workers have access to social media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and others on their desk, they will tend to waste much time looking at news feeds, posts, pictures, and comments of people at the expense of assigned duty. This can be hurting for a company as there will be less productive hours that may force the firms into losses. Therefore, though the social media is an excellent tool for marketing products or services and communicating with clients of a company, it can at the same time be costly if not well utilized to realize the company’s set goals and objectives.
Another negative part of social networking is that it does not guarantee personal privacy. This is because it tries to encourage persons to be open about their lives and everyone can get access to your personal information by reading your profile. Like on Facebook and Twitter people, post about their lives and others read and understand what you are exactly going through in your life and they remain forever unless you delete. Also, it can be so difficult to stop photos of you going all over the social media more especially that you took with friends during a party. This may create a bad image of you to your boss, and he or she may develop wrong perceptions of you and even be victimized for such stupid thing.
Usually, social media creates a false sense of connection. According to a study, that was conducted at the Cornell University by Steven Strogatz, social media makes it difficult for people to differentiate between serious relationships they foster in the real world and the other casual relationships developed in the social media. He terms these relationships to be time and energy wasting and calls people to engage in a more meaningful connection other than in the social media. This is a challenge for individuals in social media...