Currently, social media has been so been the core part of the internet. Actually social media use has been extensively embraced and their use is everywhere as almost every person who has access to the internet uses various types of social media every day. The most common social media are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and MySpace (Edgington 17). The spontaneous increase in the use of social media like Facebook has motivated companies to permit access to these social media at using their network. Nevertheless, a lot of people have questioned social media as they have upraised security as well as privacy issues to the users. Social media is claimed to pose a lot of danger to its users (Minton 38). Several teenagers and also adults share their individual information like videos, date of birth, their age, photos and their interests such that it is easy for a stranger to get to know almost everything about a person whom they may have not even ever met. Therefore such information being shared puts the users into great danger. This paper discusses the dangers of social media on cyberbullying, social skills as and also mental health of their users.
Cyberbullying is very prevalent in social media. Currently every user of any social media is at risk of experiencing cyberbullying. Cyberbullying in social media can be in form of social exclusion, to share private, humiliating as well as inappropriate information with the public, to spread rumors, threatening messages and also social exclusion (O’Keeffe 78). Cyberbullying does not despise people by age and therefore affects any kind of person including children, teenagers as well as adults who end up feeling distressed and lonely as whenever they are bullied in social media. Research has determined that those who spend much time on social media have higher risk of experiencing cyberbullying. Actually those who spend more than two hours in social media in a day are more prevalent to experience cyberbullying. In essence, cyberbullying is capable of making the victim overwhelmed which can lead them to feel embarrassed as they encounter this devastating time as well as they tend not to know what intervention is available for them. Social media has been significantly abused and many users become victims every day. Measures to control such cyberbullying has been lacking and people continue to be oppressed (O’Keeffe 80). Twitter and Facebook for example have been known to be leading platforms that cyberbullying occur. It has been reported that cyberbullying in social media have led to tragic events such as suicide. Therefore more action needs to be taken to protect social media users especially children from cyberbullying.
Social media use negatively affect social skills of its users as it hinders the mastering of significant social skills. Social media limits face-to face communication (Ephraim 279). Whenever we engage in face-to-face communication, social skills are portrayed vocal as well as visual cues in the setting of the circumstances. In essence, the normal face-to-face communication has been replaced by social media therefore having their capacity of having an actual conversation lost. To be specific, when having a face-to face conversation, most part of the message is the bodily language. Literally, the body enables us to have a greater insight into other people’s thoughts. On the other hand, communication through social media does not involve body language. Social media does not enable the user to read other users’ body language and neither can they also read for that user to. As a result, social media tends to be enhancing misunderstanding or worse it encourages the users to engage in insult conversations that they would not have had if it were a face-to-face communication (Ephraim 280).
Moreover, social media is making people to lose their sense of what is appropriate as they tend to throw words inappropriately. Social media has made people to lose respect on one another which is an important social skill. Teenagers and other underage users are the ones who use social media the most. As these underage users use social media they tend not to take into consideration the dangers of social media (Ephraim 281). According to them, they perceive social media to be an innocent and peaceful site. Most of them utilize these sites to communicate with their friend. Many parents do not have the knowledge of the possible misuse of social media that can be dangerous to their children. Additionally, some parents do not know that their children use social media or even being very addicted. A number of cases of grave consequences involving children becoming victims of social media users have been reported worldwide as children develop inappropriate behaviors. Social media promotes immorality in our society and worst of it exposes young children to explicit content that is inappropriate for the children to view that result in children coping such inappropriate behaviors (Minton 99). There is enough evidence that reveals that out of ten adolescents, at least one of them posts their own nude or semi-nude pictures on their social media pages. For an adult, he or she is aware and has the capacity of handling the dangers uploading personal information to social media but for children, they may be unable to handle it because they are immature and neither have their minds developed to the capacity of comprehending the complication of social media. Children tend to copy such behavior which is against their immorality. Posting such nude photos can lead to consequences such as cyberbullying (TMW 100). A child that encounter such consequences of posting nudes in social media like cyberbullying tends to develop self-esteem issues and worse negatively affect them psychologically.
Respect is important for a conversation to be effective. Social media has therefore given it users the capacity to be disrespectful by insulting others since they are cannot see each other face-to-face or at least get into physical contact in anyway (Edgington 21). Also, social media has cause the development of certain antisocial behaviors. Due to the addiction of social media, people have lost their social skills of active participation in real conversation. People no longer have the capacity to have an effective communication due to their lack of paying attention as they tend to spend most of their time glued to their phones using social media while having a real conversation. Moreover social media has led to development of certain immoral and in appropriate behaviors that negatively impact their social skills such as behaving appropriately.
A number of studies have found out a relation between social media and mental health issues such as alleviated suicide risks, sleep disorders, eating disorders, anxiety and also depression (TMW 56). Social media like Facebook has proven to lead to mental health symptoms like depression suppose the page triggers a feeling of envy to the user. As the user scrolls through their social media pages they may come across certain contents that are emotional thus impacting their emotions which eventually leads to depression. The content in social media platforms can be affect the psychological wellbeing of an individual making them to be psychologically disturbed that can make them to resort to committing suicide (TMW 61). Actually the increasing rates of suicide in the United States, the blame has been placed on the increased use of social media. Recent studies shows that those spending most of their time especially during night hours on social media have a higher probability of suffering from mood issues like bipolar disorder and neuroticism.
Essentially, it is vivid that substantial evidence exists that indicates that social media is so dangerous. Despite social media being dangerous, it is hard to do away with social media and people still uses social media despite knowing the dangers of these social media. Social media use trends are both on the local and global scale. Social media use needs to be regulated and issues of cyberbullying, mental health issues and social skills issues needs to be taken into consideration. Every person is entitled to live a secure life and healthy life. We cannot live with a system which has breaded into our communities spontaneously and significantly such that has greatly affected our behaviors and mental health. A lot of people are suffering from the negative effects of social media. Therefore social media should be refocused on improving people’s lives and not making it more worse. Human life and their well-being is important and should be extensively taken into consideration. Therefore the negative impacts of social media should be reviewed.