The negative effects of Social Media
Social media is becoming very popular, it allows people to chat, share photos and connect with others from the comfort of their own home. However, connecting with others in an era of free information can also have its downside.
Social media users focus more on casual relationships online than meaningful relationships in real life. The real life relationships will begin to weaken and said person will become more disconnected from the realm world.
The immediacy provided by social media is available to predators as well as friends. Children are especially vulnerable to personal attacks from anonymous people or people posing as ones the victim trust. The devastation of these online attacks can leave deep mental scars. In several cases, victims have even been driven to suicide. The anonymity afforded online can bring out dark impulses that might otherwise be suppressed. Cyber-bullying has spread widely among youth, with 42% reporting that they have been victims, according to a 2010 CBS News report.
Social media sites also pose as a distraction to employees who show more interest in what their friends are posting rather than doing work. This causes a decrease in productivity, Wired.com posted two studies which showed damage to productivity caused by social media: Nucleus Research reported that Facebook lowers 1.5% of office productivity while Morse claimed that British companies lost 2.2 billion employees a year to the social trend.
Social media encourage users to be more public about their lives. Since privacy control is not heavily enforced and the post privacy is usually set to public, it is usually overlooked and a post meant for only one person can be shared to the whole world.
Social media can disconnect you from the real world, subject you to anonymous threats, decrease your productivity in a professional environment and cause private posts to circulate the internet. Overall, real-world interaction is a better way to share with friends.
16 GameGeneration / June, 2014