With the passage of time, human lives have become hectic and cumbersome. This has raised several problems for people and has also made them lose out on a lot of things. One of such things is social interactions. People can’t find times to meet their loved ones and know what they are up to. To this, the growing technology provided a solution in the form of social media. With the invention of social media, people can keep a track of the activities of their friends and family and can chat with them. It is like a virtual society. But today, one can notice several negative effects that this virtual society is leaving on humans. Let’s have a look at 10 such effects-
1. Turns People Away from the Society
One of the major nuances of social media is that it has made people believe that the virtual social interactions it presents is what the definition of society is. This leads to experiencing a cut-off from the actual society. Instead of moving out, talking to people and making friends, people would rather lie on a couch with their mobile phones and talk to people over social media. Thus, something that was supposed to be a cure for social cut-off has now become the reason of humans, who had been social mammals for millions of years, not being able to face the actual societal interactions.
2. Affects Sleep
Social media can affect the sleep of people. It acts as a disturbance to the normal sleep rhythm. People remain hooked to their mobile phones and PC screens even when the lights are off. This leads to the exposure to a huge amount of blue light. Thus, when a person sleeps, the brain has a hard time believing that it is dark and therefore, it cannot execute the sleep cycle with ease. People’s urge to periodically check their cell phones for notifications also causes disruption in their sleep cycle.
3. Promotes Unnecessary Expenditure
Social media is a big platform for various businesses to put up their advertisements. Advanced data sharing policies have made it easier for social media platforms to guess what product or service has been looked up for by an individual over the e-commerce sites and then, they present relatable ads in front of them. The attractive offers put up by such ads makes people buy things that they don’t require and thus, make them spend money unnecessarily.
4. Is Addictive
Well, anything that is done for a large part of time is bound to turn into an addiction and such is the case with social media too. People have fallen into the habit of regular checking of the notifications on their cell phones to remain updated in their world of virtual society. This pulls them away from doing other productive work and to fulfil their real-life obligations and spend time on things they really love to do.
5. Fuels Envy
People use social media to post their pictures and videos. Most of the times, these photos, generally depicting a tour or any other happy event makes some people envious of not having such things in their lives. Social media also excites FOMO in people when they see themselves excluded of a group photo or a group chat. It therefore causes great harm to human emotions and psyche.
6. Presents the Fake as the Real
We daily hear numerous cases of rumours or some fake news spread through social media that result in dire consequences. People readily believe on the information provided by social media and this makes them inflict damage to life and property. A ripe example of this is how several fake theories about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and its cures are running over social media and how it has made many people suffer. Though governments pressurise these platforms to keep a check on such rumours and the platforms oblige by applying several policies, this problem still persists.
7. Hosts Online Bullying
Social media plays host to a huge amount of online bullying and hate. Bullies often use these platforms to make death threats, hurtful speech, inappropriate and sexual remarks etc. The victims of these crimes get affected in several ways, for example fear, emotional instability, depression, etc. Social media platforms have come up with options of reporting such remarks and taking actions against the perpetrator but the pain caused to the victim can’t be quantified.
8. Makes People Say Anything Freely
How many times have you thought of sending messages to people to say something that would be difficult to say on their face? We feel that this is an advantage of social media that it lets us say things freely as we don’t have to be afraid of the physical reaction of the person. But this advantage can very swiftly become a great adversity. Under this security, people often share things that have been private to them and do not realise how other people can play with them once they know such information.
9. Imposes Meaningless Compulsions
You see that an acquaintance, who usually puts nice comments on your photo, has uploaded a photo of his own. You don’t intend to put a comment on it but due to the compulsion that social media has imposed on you, you have to write something. You opened a message from your friend but are too busy to reply to it. But since, now you have seen the message, you feel a compulsion to reply, or a fight may break out. People often feel similar unnecessary compulsions from social media that adds more stress to an already stressful life.
10. Disrupts Time Management
Social media is addictive and distracting and thus, disrupts time management, especially for students and working people. Instead of doing the things that are more important in their lives presently, people constantly waste their time over social media and since it is addictive, they can’t let go of it easily. This makes them idle and pulls them away from their work as they spend hours and hours a day in mindless scrolling.
