What is your name on Facebook? Hey! Send me a follow request? Don't you know him? He is a famous Instagram celebrity with more than a million followers.
Social media is a platform through which one can stay connected with others by means of communication and sharing data. Posting images, videos, so that people can see and heart it. It refers to the means of interaction among people in virtual communities and network.
Popular social media platform:
The world's largest social network is facebook. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg. It has more than 2 billion monthly active users. One can create an account and add others as friends, exchange messages, photos, etc. And there are options of create page for brand promotions and many more.
It is a social media platform that allows a person to share messages in form of status. It has a word limit of 140 characters.
YouTube
It is a famous video hosting and watching website.
It is a photo and video sharing application that allows users to apply digital filters on their pictures, option of creating boomerang and videos.
Impacts
Positive impacts
For individuals, social media is used to keep it touch with family and friends. For businesses, social media have become an indispensible tool. Brand promotion, customer engagement, collecting and sharing information have mended the ways in favor of ecommerce.
As we are already so much acquainted with social media, and enjoying its benefits. So there is not much need for the discussion of its positive impact. Even so, it brought the world closer by connecting its people. It provides cost effective support to small and large scale business. It even created more job opportunities for content writer, bloggers, etc.
Negative impacts
Now let's talk about the negative impact of social networking. It affects people of all ages, my it young minds or middle aged work person. Let's discuss the major ones:
Addiction
Many theories shows and proves that social media addiction have become more serious than alcohol addiction. Spending too long on social networking sites can affect your mood. Reports show that people who spend major amount of time on social media are likely to develop poor mental health, including the symptoms of anxiety and depression. It can cause psychological stress. One should not spend more than two hours per day on social media. Even two hours is too much but we know addiction does not go easy.
Cyber crimes
Social media and its lack of cyber security have lead to many cyber criminals to emerge and carry out their heinous intentions. Even cyber bullying is very common now a days. Social media indeed made it easy to connect with people, but it also made it easier for the predators to find victims. And these cber attacks often leaves mental scars and affect people of every age.
Fear of missing out
When you spend considerable large amount of time on you social media account, you tend to stalk people. People who come from different background can influence you in spending more than you have when you see them having more fun than you right now. Their lifestyle and seemingly enjoyable status may create inferiority complex for others. Fear of missing out is a negative impact of social media. It is a form of anxiety that one gets when they start to fear missing out on a positive experience that someone else it getting. And this fear is fueled by continuous social media engagement.
Body shaming
Many insta users, models, and celebrities who have more than a million followers tend to create false body image goals. To reach this body image goal, many people start following diets and some take adverse steps too. May it be man or woman, no gender is safe from being body shamed. People on social media won't shy away from pointing that extra fat. These false social media standards have lead to increase in inferiority complex and depression rate. They make you feel conscious about your shape and looks. But you have to understand that these standards of unachievable and artificial beauty are false.
Sleep patterns
Overuse and severe addiction of social media have led to development of unhealthy sleep patterns. It starts affecting your productivity and makes it difficult to sleep. Try shortening the time you spend on social media and get enough sleep.