Is Social Media Making Me Miserable?

A recent article in Time magazine titled, “You Asked: Is Social Media Making Me Miserable?”, overlooked the various studies conducted on social media’s effect on people’s lives. Social media is a major part of people’s lives across the world. It provides them with information and allows them to connect with others at the click of a button or tap of a finger. Author of the article, Markham Heid writes, “Social media now dictates how people interact with friends, read the news and navigate their day-to-day existence” (TIME). However, the accessibility we now have to everything and everyone around us can lead to some negative effects. Social media keeps changing in terms of content and user interaction, and as we adapt it to it, it can do more

Children are often bullied in school, but they can also be bullied online. Cyber-bullying is bullying over devices and often using social media to conduct it. It has become common due to the rapidly increasing use of social media. The bullying is done by sharing embarrassing or demeaning content of one another or writing cruel messages. Some take it a step further and create fake accounts to anonymously harass a person, or even use the fake account to impersonate that person. Due to social media, cyber-bullying is a harsh reality that children are being born

Social media can make people socially isolated. It is due to passive consumption of social media. People will scroll through their news feed and look at posts with commenting on it. This increases feelings of disconnect because people can look at what others are doing but not share any feedback with each other. It hurts if someone does not like your post. Social media lacks real connection which creates feelings of loneliness and isolation within a human being. Social media is a quick and easy way to spread news and information across the world. However, the common saying, “you can’t believe everything you see on the internet,” is true. Social media allows the spread of unreliable and false information. A study done by the American Press Institute found, “64% of people who use Twitter for news say that they have encountered something they "later discovered wasn't true," and 16% of Twitter news users say that "they had retweeted or posted a tweet they later discovered to be false” (API). This can have various effects as people are falsely educated which can lead to some bad or unnecessary decisions. It is difficult in today’s society to stay away from social networks, but by limiting the use or time spent on them one people can start to see how much better they can connect with others. We need to go back to the basics. As a start, one can have a night out and talk with friends in