It seems that with every New Year that passes, new phone advances are ready to be sold on the market. While these advances are great for businesses, since typically new products sell very well, it also means that more and more people are going to be glued to their phones. One of the main draws is the easy access to social media platforms that these new products offer. Social media plays a huge part in the 21st century. People are perpetually on social sites or apps, and although social media is fun and entertaining, it is also distracting and it creates an unnecessary distance between people. Families that are supposed to bond are separated by the constant presence of phone screens; friends that make plans to hang out are more focused on phone screens that spending quality time with each other. You can find people on their phones wherever you go and while what they are doing on them might be anyone’s guess, there is a possibility that most are using social media.
Being constantly on social media turns into an addiction. Social media can affect your cognitive function; for example, if you post a picture on a social website, “likes” and comments the picture gets feel as a reward. Since it takes little effort to get said rewarded, it’ll leave you craving for more of that attention. Social media also causes the release of dopamine in the brain, which is the feel-good chemical that your brain releases and leaves you with a satisfaction feeling. The more attention a person receives, the more likely they are to continue posting. You can read an article about it here.
Social media has become so common and popular that we do not realize the effect it has on us. We take our lives for granted; we rarely socialize with people unless it’s in school or in the workplace, because not even in one’s household is there much communication between family members. Slowly, our social capabilities will lessen due to the huge amount of time we waste using apps and going to websites that have no actual use besides entertainment and little more. Think of the last time you smiled at someone instead of using a smiling emoji; think of the last time you had a long lasting conversation with someone outside of a computer screen. Does it seem like a long time when you think about it? Maybe it has been, since we focus more on looking down at our screens than what is surrounding us. We miss out on opportunities because we are so focused on whatever pops up on our cellphones
Now, the claim here is not that social media is a bad thing. It is a great place to spread creativity, ideas, thoughts, etc. However, too much of it can cause us to lose touch with our lives and human side, because when we tap into our virtual world we become robots programmed to do a single task. So, is social media really making us more social or is it making us push away our real lives for one on a screen?