Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
We live in a time where technological advances are being made every day. We are often blinded by all the positive aspects of technology and end up ignoring the negatives.
All in all, we use social media more than we think we do. Social media has become our outlet for interactions with people near and far.
So how is it that social media is slowly taking us down?
1. Google searches make it too easy
A quick “copy and paste” into the Google search bar will lead you to over a thousand different results. This hurts students because, instead of opening a book up and learning about a topic, they easily find the answers they seek on Google. This leads to people just memorizing answers and definitions instead of learning what it is or what it does. When this happens, test scores inevitably decline.
2. It’s distracting
Social media affects students in class *big time*. Students tend to scroll through their timeline on Instagram or Twitter when a lecture is boring or when the professor just isn’t looking. If you are a student who likes to take notes on your laptop, you have probably been distracted once or twice by online shopping, texting or even watching Netflix. Basically, anything and everything that isn’t listening to the professor. You might think that you can multitask and pay attention, but when you try to study you might find that you haven’t retained hardly any of the information. Yikes!
Even though it is annoying when professors say that you can’t use your laptops to take notes, they are doing you a favor!
3. Anyone can see what you post
Social media could be the defining factor of whether or not you’ll get your dream job. How? Well, I bet you had a bunch of fun at the ABC (anything but clothes) themed party that you went to sophomore year. I also bet you posted a cute pic for your followers to see, right?
What you probably didn’t realize is that the entire world has access to them. Now that “cute pic” is the reason why you didn’t get accepted to grad school or why you didn’t land your dream job. The things you post on social media can, and will, come back to haunt you like karma.
Tip: If you wouldn’t want your grandma to see the picture, don’t post it!
Social media has so many positive impacts on our lives that we do not always recognize. Through utilizing social media we learn to communicate and network with greater ease. However, we have to hit the “pause” button sometimes because social media could slowly be hurting your education and career.