To make the world a global village is what the aim was when the internet was first introduced. Every person was supposed to easily get connected to another making it possible for everyone to share all sort of things from important business documents to music files among many more items. The advent of social media took the world by storm. The fact that someone in the North Pole can reach and interact with someone in the South Pole at a friendly level is, in fact, intriguing until date. This is what our forefathers dreamt of. They had to get birds to help them do this in their days. The reliability and efficiency of it all are mind-blowing. Each day, more people are getting to use and experience the power of social media. There are more people using the platform now more than ever. The number keeps increasing on a daily basis. 51% of the world currently has access to the internet and well over 90% of this population uses this for the purpose of accessing social media.
There are a lot of positive impacts that have been associated with technology, the internet, and more particularly, social media. The list of the pros seems to be endless. No one even seems to care about the cons. However, people should not turn a blind eye to the fact that the problems do exist and increasingly affects each person as days go by. Facebook is undisputedly the largest social media platform in the world with billions of people using the website to interact and exchange information each day. Chamath Palihapitiya, who was a VP at the company that created Facebook, has negative sentiments concerning it despite the website being bigger than what he probably expected it to be.
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Palihapitiya confesses that he has the feeling of regret and guilt about his contributions in building the company. This is because, according to him, he thought that he was building something that would help people but is instead bringing harm their way. When he joined Facebook in 2007, only a few people were worried about the negative effects of Facebook. However, currently, Palihapitiya is of the view that the online platform is destroying how people interact on a daily basis. The negative effects of excess social media networking keep exposing themselves as social media platforms grow. The entire social structure seems to be evolving.
Social Media has become an outlet for people to influence other people, to ridicule others, and a chance for cyberbullying. Those posting content on these sites do not care about what they say or do. Vloggers and gamers have gained so much influence over their fans so much that they no longer have limits to what they can put up. Not so long ago, Logan Paul, a really popular social media personality, posted a video on YouTube of himself ridiculing a dead body that he came across in a forest. As he wasted through The Sea of Trees in Japan together with a few friends, they stumbled upon a body of someone who had allegedly committed suicide. Paul and his group began making mad jokes about the deceased and the dead generally, making unreasonable jokes about them. Any human being with even the tiniest of humanity in them would not edit such a video and post it on their social media platforms as they would consider this inappropriate and inconsiderate. However, Paul went ahead and posted it on his channel.
Four years ago, two teenagers were charged with murder after they were found guilty of repeatedly stabbing their classmate in order to please someone on the internet that they referred to as Slenderman. This case shows how far social media influencing can affect individuals negatively. Characters and actions of people can be heavily influenced by people on social media and content posted by others. People have lost touch with each other and have turned to social media to fill the empty friendship voids. Technology has given them the illusion that one can get companions without having to build relationships. Anytime one wants to be heard, they grab their phones and send texts to a person miles away yet they have the option of sharing their problems with a family member seated right next to them. This has immensely affected interpersonal relationships as will be seen later.
The case of cyber-bullying has become a nuisance in the society. This has grown to the extent that young people have resorted to committing suicide due to the online bullying that they constantly face. Cases of self-harm and suicide among teenagers has exponentially grown as more people get admitted to hospital due to depression-related cases. Bullying across social media tends to increase anxiety among young individuals. Depression tends to set in due to the standards set by social media influencers on how people should lavishly and freely live their lives. No one has managed to prove that the suicide and depression cases are linked to social media pressure. However, social media influence tends to be a common denominator in all these cases. People have developed low self-esteem and, over time, gathered negative emotions about themselves just by unknowingly comparing their lives against others on social media.
It is not only the social aspects of people that have decayed over time. With Google, one can literally search for anything within seconds and gather up huge chunks of information concerning a single subject matter in a few minutes. Research that used to take a few days to gather now takes minutes. A lot of people would agree that this is definitely a good and convenient thing. However, no one sees the flip side of this. A lot of people nowadays struggle with concentration problems. If asked, many would confess that they have problems reading long pieces of articles and even books. This is because they can get summaries of the articles and books on the internet in a single button click. Blogs posted online have become an unstoppable trend. Since a lot of people want to scroll through a lot of pieces on the internet at any given time, bloggers have found it necessary to keep their content short and precise. This has become the norm and, over time, people have acquired difficulties in reading lengthy pieces. The way people think has changed (Caar, 2008) .
The beginning of the 21 st century has been marked by an era in which people are constantly communicating but have sacrificed conversation just for connection (Turkle, 2012) . Families at home no longer have the family bond that used to exist. Siblings sit in the living room texting as the adults read their emails. During executive board meetings, people secretly use their phones to text others or catch up with what is trending on the internet. Studies on mobile connections, technologies, and people reveal that mobile phones change not only what people do but also who they are (Turkle, 2012) . Social behavior has immensely changed over the last two decades. In the morning as people go to work, one would not miss young people who fear conversations going to work in buses. In the library, one would not be surprised to see hundreds of young people with their earphones on as they study. Psychologically, human relationships are rich and need time to be built. They tend to be messy and demanding. Technology has been used to cover up the mess. However, the mess tends to pile up and, over time, it gets difficult to be covered. This is the breaking point of most people.
In a nutshell, the advantages that have come with the growth and spread of technology and social media cannot be underestimated. Nowadays, businesses and monetary transactions have become a lot easier. News reaches people in a matter of seconds. However, the goodies that come with technology should not make people turn a blind eye to the fact that it is also negatively affecting humans. The negative attributes started springing up slowly but have increased as time passes. As technology improves and spreads, so do these attributes. It is time the society is educated and accepts that these vices exist and are supposed to be dealt with. The sooner this happens, the higher the possibility of the reduction of cases of depression, suicide, and self-harm resulting from the use of technology and social media.
References
Caar, N. (2008, August). Is Google Making Us Stupid? Retrieved December 10, 2018, from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Turkle, S. (2012, April 21). The Flight From Conversation . Retrieved December 10, 2018, from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html
