Social media:
OUR NEW
BEST FRIEND.
17
In a typical day, about how much time do you spend using social networking websites?
Which tool of communication do you prefer?
Social media and humans are inseparable nowadays! It’s amazing how it has had a strong effect on all the communities around the world. In Egypt, students are highly dependent when it comes to phones, Internet and social networks. A survey was conducted at AUC to evaluate the weight of social media in the students’ lives. The greatest percentage spends 2-4 hours a day on their social media sources and only 20% of the people stated they spent 1-2 hours per day. 60% then think that social media affect family relationships in a negative way. Of course they do, since although social networks are supposed to bring people together, they are creating a distance between family members on the inside. Even if you’re physically spending time with your family, you’re mentally absent, always on your phone texting your friends and checking updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Moreover, 13% think it doesn’t affect family relationships while 25% consider the impact as positive.
Let’s admit it, whether we like it or not, that social media has isolated us to some extent. It’s pretty predictable that up to 62.75% of the people interrogated think that too. On the other hand, 94% see it as one of the strongest forms of communication. When asked about their favorite form of communication (verbal via phone calls, face to face or via social networks), phone calls got the least percentage of 9.8% while social networks got 23.5% and face to face got the highest rate of 66.6%. Even if the percentage of social media being the favorite way of communication, 84.3% cannot live without it.
In our present day can you live without social media ( e.g. fb, whatsApp, twitter, viber, etc. )
ScienCovery/December, 2013
Moataz Mady
Do you think that social media isolates people?