Based on the materials presented in class and your own background knowledge and experiences, do you think social media has overall had a more positive or negative impact on the world?
There are many positive and many negative impacts of social media.
The Positive effects would include the fact that you can communicate with people all over the world for free. For example, I go to overnight camp and there are a lot of international campers and I have a friend that lives in France and because of Facebook I get to talk to her everyday. Also social media is a great way to keep up with current events. Everyone loves see what the next tweet from trump will say. You get to keep up with politics and be entertained all in one.
While there are a lot of positive effects of social media there are just as many negatives. As shown in the presentation done by Thalia and Iram, social media has a negative effect on mental health. This generation has the highest rate of depression and anxiety in teens to date. People are more comfortable saying negative things about others when they do not need to say anything to someones face and they can hide behind a screen. 39 percent of social media users have been bullied online in some way. In schools popularity is no longer measured by how many people at school know who you are. Now it is measured by your social media following and how many likes you get. Teens are more obsessed with having Facebook friends then real friends who are there for you when you need them and are not superficial. Also as seen in Maryanne and Jasleen’s presentation, staying at home and not moving has its negative effects on a persons health. Adolescents are spending more time at home then out with there friends which is not good for there health. Another side effect of social media is the fact that teenagers are not learning valuable communication skills because the only time they actually talk to people is threw a screen.
As you can see social media has both its positive and negative effects. I believe that the negatives out way the positives. If teenagers had the ability to moderate the amount of time the spent on social media accounts that would be very beneficial. i do not think that social media should be removed from everyone’s lives completely because that is unrealistic, but if people started to only check there accounts once or twice a day rather then every five minutes that could make a huge difference on our society.
Rebecca Gillman blog 