The Excessive Usage of Social Media and its Effects on Youth

In digital times like ours, we are always surrounded by mainstream social media vibes. People are busy changing statuses on their smartphones or laptops, sharing images, enjoying stuff and chatting with buddies back and forth. For almost all, the influence of social networking websites has grown from becoming an amusing extra into a highly integrated aspect of almost every part of everyday life in just over a century.

Though social networking is highly beneficial in a number of different ways (i.e., self-expression, connecting with long-distance family and friends, self-identity, moral, psychological and emotional support, etc.), it still has a significant negative impact on mental well-being of youngsters resulting in high levels of stress because of constant comparison and several other disadvantages like lack of emotional connections, cyber bullying and even helping the manipulation in politics to promote certain ideas in the audience.

Emotional Ignorance

The most saddening part is that the use of social media is making people emotionally disconnected with their family and friends for obvious reasons. They spend the expected family time staying on their phones at every family gathering. Parents and the children both are equally engaged in their social media activities rather than building their bonds over the dinner table which is causing the loss of close ties and making people more introverted, alone and self centered. The fact that social media is making people ignorant towards their very blood relations is due to the power we have given it to control our emotions.

Cyber Crimes through Social Media

Cyber crime is the next alarming affect, it has a computer and a network to carry out the mentioned crime and it confines the issues affecting these kinds of acts are becoming heavy-profile, notably those involving hacking, violation of privacy, unmerited surveillance, extorsion, child exploitation and child sex abuse. They have also built an extent on cyberspace culture that affects internet users in their domain or even at the pro level. Currently, these sites are not just a communication tool to maintain contact with old and the new mates but they have also somehow become a public platform for expressing views and mobilizing people for a socialist revolution. The explosive growth and influence of these websites has drawn cyber criminals to undertake cyber crimes in social networking sites which present a threat to the confidentiality of people as well as public safety.

Manipulation & Its Influence

Setting aside the emotional or cyber manipulation, social media is helping leading politicians or other organizations forming people’s ideologies as per their interest which is very much possible when we look at the power of social sites. They manipulate the internet population through the usage of favorable pages and posts in their luck to enter people’s good books and it is happening quite well. The manipulation is easier these days because people are so into facebook, twitter and instagram that they just agree to whatever they read and put it forward to their social friends without any confirmation or study which is kind of polluting our society.