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Social Media And Its Effects On Society

Decent Essays

Strangely, being on social media for several hours daily is regarded as normal. Although social media use would be classified as a mainstream activity, that does not make common behavior the correct behavior. “Behaviors[sic] such as attempting to attract more followers about your life.” (Fishwick, 2016). Users today are more willing to participate in activities such as cyberbullying, or activities that could potentially harm others or themselves mentally or physically. Getting praise and compliments from strangers, who couldn’t care any less about another user’s well-being, are more important than their own well-being. Blindly following the masses, social media users do not realize the impact they have on others and even on themselves. …show more content…

SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profile, lists their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends list.” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). As technology advanced, social media combined business and personal interactions through website called Ryze.com. The social compliment website, Friendster.com encountered difficulties because the website only allowed users to view profiles of those who were “four degrees away (friends-of-friends-of-friends-of-friends).” This made it difficult to reach out to strangers unless willing to add these strangers as friends (Boyd & Ellison,2007). Fast-forwarding to today, social media has risen to a more global scale allowing users to communicate and share with other users that reside in different cities, states, or countries. With social media, it is quite common to hear those from the previous generations (e.g. parents and grandparents) express their negative opinions about frequent usage. In fact, the assumptions made by negative spectators may not be wrong. For instance, there is an increasing number of adolescents who use social media regularly. Frequent usage could interfere with daily activities such as working and sleeping could make individuals less productive. Not only does social media interfere with daily life, but it also could shape the way daily life is viewed. PhD student, Fanni Bányai acknowledged that there is a “negative relationship between self-esteem and high levels of

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