The Impact of Social Media on Society 

Social media has grown to become a major part of peoples lives and it is nowadays one of the main places where people keep in touch with their families and friends. During the last decade or two social media has slowly become more popular and popular, and there is constantly new applications that are trending in the world of social media. Socia media allows people to send messages, send photos or even call to each other to the other side of the world whitin seconds. This is something that was never done or even possible, before social media. In social media, on top of the capability of sending messages people are able to post photos, this can be a way for people for example to increase their self-esteem and make themselves feel noticed and better the sense of belonging. All of these things mentioned above make the use of social media addicting for people, and this can be seen in the average usage of social media. People spend 2.3 hours per day on social media on average, and I fell like the time is constantly getting way more higher in the younger generation of people who are using social media sometimes 2.3 hours on one go. This can be seen as a really concerning fact and as something that needs to be worked on. While social media has its benefits, it also has a lot of downsides to it. Social media stimulates the human brain in a way that when you get dopamine and a good feeling from the scrolling of social media, you might not get the natural dopamine from the things you do in your daily life as good anymore. For example things like these will in the long run affect your overall feeling. On top of that social media can be a cause off a big amount of stress and anxiety and increase loneliness. (Zsila, Reyes 2023) 

Benefits of Social Media 

Social media has a lot of positive in it, for example like mentioned before, social media allows people to communicate with each other anywhere in the world at any time. This makes it easy for people to stay connected and keep the connections even if they are not in the same place with the person they are talking with. With this ability mentioned above, people can also find new friends and communities from anywhere in the world that share the same passions and interests as they do. Social media can also be a good place for people to learn stuff, either learning from other peoples experiences or when some areas experts are posting and learning from those. But if we are jumping away from the relationships, social media also has a business side to it. Social media gives companies and influencers the capability to monetize their social medias and make a lot of money with them. When people are scrolling through social media there are constantly going trough the sites that they are scrolling trough. This means that basically every time someone is going trough social media, it is a chance for someone to advertise their products or services for the people. Social media has billions of users on the daily, which is a lot of eyes that you can sell for. This is one of the main advertising methods nowadays for businesses, and it also a big way for many companies that they generate money with. On top of sales for customers, companies can also find a variety different new customers and other companies they can work with together, and both of the companies can gain good things from it. (Robinson, Smith 2023) 

Disadvantages of Social Media 

When social media has a lot of good in it, it also has the downside for it. Social media can cause a lot of anxiety, stress, decreased self-confidence and in worst cases in can also turn into depression and other struggles with mental health. There is a lot of bullying happening trough social media when people can say things out loud either anonymously or just by saying them behind a screen and not saying them for people face to face. The way that the social media stimulates the human brain can also result in social media addiction for people or in things like Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), when your friends are for example posting from somewhere they are or posting about fun things they are doing, people might get FOMO really easily when they are scared that they are missing out when they are not apart of something which then might cause them to get anxiety from it. Nowadays in social media there has been also generated as some would a say a type for a “perfect body”, when people are constantly looking at the models and other influencers in social media, and they don’t realize the fact of how modified and edited the photos are. It leads to a lot of people being unhappy with their own body and how they are looking from the outside, this is really bad for the human mind because the photos they are looking at are not I would say realistic, this might result in depression for people. (Robinson, Smith 2023) 

Sources :  

Zsila, A. Reyes, M. 2023. Pros § Cons : Impacts of Social Media on Mental Health. Read on 16.11.2023. https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-023-01243-x 

Robinson, L. Smith, M. 2023. Social Media and Mental Health. Read on 16.11.2023. Updated on 29.3.2023. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm