Social Media Dependency

Technology is progressing more quickly and dramatically than ever before. Growth has been exponential in a range of fields, including but not limited to computing and online technologies. We are living in a world that seems ripe with endless possibilities. In this essay, I will discuss one aspect of technology that seems to be accelerating connectivity while simultaneously hindering it: social media.

I think the social media revolution may have started with MySpace, but I can’t really be sure. My first real experience with social media was through Facebook. I remember opening my account and thinking to myself “This is stupid. If my friends want to look at my holiday snaps, they can just come round for a cuppa and a chat. The world doesn’t need this.” However to my surprise, I became hooked after I began to communicate with people on the platform. It was a new, weird kind of platform that seemed strangely addictive, and probably just like the first days of tobacco, nobody realized how bad it was for us at the time.

These days, when I walk around town, I see people glued to their phones. They don’t take the time to appreciate the real world, and their place in it. Communication will also be affected by continued social media use, as this will alter the way humans naturally interact with one another. In my opinion, it lowers our ability to make genuine connections with our friends and family members, and in turn will potentially damage the fabric of society. Another aspect to consider is how social media is shaping the future generation. The lives people portray online can be false, and give young people unrealistic expectations to live up to. This can potentially lead to feelings of inadequacy and depression.

I can see some good in social media. For example, having access to information or small businesses being able to advertise and reach more people than they would have been able to in the past, but there is also a flip side to that coin. Even though we can get a lot of information, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern real news from fake, and to me, this is a very worrying concept.

For about two years now, I have noticed a steady decline in my use of social media. I think it has been at least five years since my last Facebook post; I do still occasionally scroll through the platform to look at photos or watch the occasional cat video on a bad day but it isn’t a part of my daily life anymore. And for that, I am definitely better off.

Kathryn

Vocabulary

holiday snaps (noun, UK slang) ? vacation photographs
cuppa (noun, UK slang) ? a cup of tea
to scroll through (verb) ? to browse social media aimlessly
glued to, hooked (on) (adj.) ? addicted
platform (noun) ? a social media or networking site
flip side to the coin (idiom) ? the other side of the story/opinion