Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Social media impact on human behaviour and society
Dependency On Technology
Social media impact on human behaviour and society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Social media impact on human behaviour and society
Transcendentalism and Self-Reliance Dependency is usually a barring factor, and when you are dependent on things like social media, you are putting yourself, and your confidence in the hands of other people. Technology, the Social norm, and todays morals, are the problem. We are dependent to social media here in the United States as 60% of our population has a social media account. The Human species is also dependent on social media because 2.95 Billion people use it! People need to cut down on the social media use! People with social media accounts use up to 40 minutes a day on it. The opposing view would say that social media brings people together. And can connect people from long distances, while this is good, people simply are attached
to it way too much. And just because such a large part of the population does it, it’s acceptable. A wise man once said ‘Man has no time to be anything but a machine’ (Thoreau). Morals today have completely gone off the deep end. With many down to earth qualities, not being passed down to the next generation, the younger generation is more, promiscuous, aggressive, closed minded, radical. I personally believe that social Media is not terrible, but is simply overused and just because other people use it, we use it.
According to the New York Times, teenagers listen to an average of 2.5 hours of music in a singular day. The messages coming through in each song may vary between drug/alcohol reference or transcendentalism. No matter where there is music, there is a lesson to be learned through ideas that Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau created. Though transcendentalism is a relatively foreign word to most, it can be defined by using five i's: individualism, inspiration, intuition, idealism and imagination which are displayed on all platforms of music today. The different music genres may vary between music from the late 1990's and children's movies today.
Modern day transcendentalists are not easily found anymore in society. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what a transcendentalist is. By being your own self, following your own standards and being yourself, you become transcendental. By looking at the Robertsons’ way of life, they would make a tremendous example of modern day transcendentalists. Their religion, love of nature, and individualism create a transcendental lifestyle.
What is Transcendentalism? Though this may sound like a new topic to you, its major tenets have been around for almost a century and many are still influencing modern life today. Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around the premises of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Along with Emerson, other important Transcendentalists including Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman also took on the unconventional morals of this movement. Today, we are going to delve into a few of these major premises practiced by Transcendentalists. The first principal is that God can be found in both nature and human nature. The second principal is embracing individualism. Both of these aspects play key roles in creating the foundation for Transcendentalism that was both seen in the 19th century and modern society.
Many people have theories and philosophies about life in general. There have been hundreds of thousands of books published by many different people on the ideas of people in the past and the present. Transcendentalism falls in amongst all of these ideas. There have been articles, essays, poems, and even books written about this subject. Transcendentalism has effected many people since the philosophy was first introduced. The idea was complex and hard to grasp for many commoners and therefore it was understood by few people, and some would think that the idea was not understood at all and that was part of the idea. Henry David Thoreau once stated about himself, “I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations” (Reuben 1).
Even though people listen to music just to hear the melody, music is a way to express certain feelings and think about what the song means to someone personally. 20th century pop artists including Dido, Louis Armstrong, and Garth Brooks reveal transcendentalist values of the 19th century Literary Movement through self-reliance, deliberate living, and importance of nature.
In the unit “The Spirit of Individualism” there are two parts, “Celebrations of the self” and “The Dark side of Individualism” with pieces that present very different perspectives on human nature. “The Dark side of Individualism” portrays human nature as greedy, confused, easily caught up in fame, and addicted to wealth and possessions. In “Celebrations of the Self”, human nature is viewed in a more positive light. The characteristics shown are self reliance, independence, wisdom and selflessness. “The Dark side of Individualism” pieces are written in a more macabre tone, whereas “Celebrations of the Self” pieces have a more positive and uplifting tone to them. The generalizations of human nature are different because of the pieces in “The Dark side of Individualism” and “Celebrations of the Self” have entirely different views on life and human nature.
Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was a movement in philosophy, literature, and religion that emerged and was popular in the nineteenth century New England because of a need to redefine man and his place in the world in response to a new and changing society. The industrial revolution, universities, westward expansion, urbanization and immigration all made the life in a city like Boston full of novelty and turbulence. Transcendentalism was a reaction to an impoverishment of religion and mechanization of consciousness of eighteenth century rational doctrines that ceased to be satisfying. After the success of the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, an American man emerged confident and energetic. However, with the release of nervous energy, an American was forced to look at a different angle at his place in the world and society.
People need people they need ways to connect with other communities and to be able to express themselves. Structural functionalism theory is based as how society is a complex system who’s parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (wikipedia.org). Since, people have the need to connect with others social media provides the means to do so. Extroverted people will have a greater geographic expansion of their social circle. Introverts are more willing to meet people online because of the sense of security it provides. Social media is growing at such a fast rate and the availability of high speed internet, everything is instantaneous. This can cause a problem with learning characteristics such as patience, narcissism, self-esteem issues or personal filters. The more time people are spending on social media sites, the more they are forgetting how to behave in real life. Social media allows for everything unfiltered. In real life there are rules to society to make sure people can peacefully live amongst each other. In order for society to cohabitate peacefully there must be a willingness to compromise among people. With the evolution of social media’s virtual communities where everything is a free forum, people are now choosing to not follow the basic rules of society, hence, the increase in crime and lack of
Transcendentalism was a philosophy that became influential during the 1800's. It was based on the belief that knowledge is not limited to and solely derived from experience and observation but from the truths seem through reason. In the United Sates, transcendentalism became both a philosophy and a literary, religious, and social movement. Emphasis was placed mainly on oneness with nature and God while making the possibility of social change a reality. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading American transcendentalist whose theories were a primary influence in transcendentalist thought and writing. Through the knowledge and direction of Ralph Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau also became leading scholars of their time by means of their influence on early American intellectual history and literature.
The first quote from Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” “Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide” ridicules jealousy by addressing the root of envy: jealousy of someone creates an imbecile assumption that that other person’s life is better than theirs or that the other person does not experience troubles. This represents one of the Transcendentalist themes of being yourself and not conforming to societal expectations. The second part of the quote suggests that when people attempt to conform to society they are essentially killing themselves by killing their individual thoughts and they are embracing thoughts and actions that are not their own. "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.” is another quote from “Self-Reliance” that continues to prove Emerson’s point that to believe in one’s self and being an individual is genius while the antithesis is to envy.
To begin with, social media has been proven to be a dangerous addiction due to the many negative side effects like: sleep deprivation, and self-esteem problems. Most of the adult American population is connected to some sort of social media site, and they have joined the banned wagon of people whom check their social media accounts at least five times a day. Using social media to often can be time consuming and essentially causes sleep deprivation because the user stays up late on social media. Since social media has grown in popularity many have began to believe that social media is a life necessity. It is viewed by many as a daily necessity like brushing our teeth, or yet as important as eating. People whom are constantly on social media have been linked to develop self-esteem problems because they are so consumed on pretending and portraying this image of a person they are not. Social media has became such an addiction that many people wake up and the first thing they do is...
Today social media has become a big influence on society. There are many different social media sites that allow people to interact with others. Such social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are many more different sites, but these are the popular networks that are being used today. These sites allow you to connect with anybody you want to. Social media sites can make you feel connected with others and seem like the best thing, but at the same time it can be a weakness that many of us have.
Social media has nothing but negative effects on people’s minds. Social networking can become very addicting and people can get wrapped up in the drama and excitement of the cyber world. It would only improve our society today if social media never existed to our knowledge. Our society today feels so connected with social media that it interferes with our lives making every task even harder with the temptations.
There are about one and a half billion users of social media worldwide. It can be used to meet new people, find old friends, chat the day away, join interest groups, or even to share pictures. Social networks were mostly created so people could meet and find new friends. What most users of social media don't know, are the dangers of using social media. One example is when you meet a person online, because they are not always who they say they are. If someone is not who you may think they are, who could they be? They can be a stalker or a person that wants to steal your identity; which could be done easily thanks to new developments of new technology. Also thanks to new technology it is now easier for people using your information to track you. Posting personal information can risk your family and friends lives. Social media can be used as a weapon against you. It can even lead to a kidnapping, or even someone's death. Many people use social media to help to waste time, but could also become an unhealthy addiction. Also social media can damage your future. When you are a teen you tend to post pretty much anything you want. This is dangerous because you can post too much personal information. What most teens don't realize is that what they do on social media now can affect them for the rest of their life. It can even come back to haunt you in the future. Social media is dangerous because it makes it easier to be stalked, identity theft to happen, kidnappings and murders, and also can ruin your future.
There are some downsides to being constantly connected to everybody through social media. The biggest down side is not communicating to loved ones and family through real life interaction, but instead through social media. That is a serious problem to some people, especially those who use technology and are familiar to technology. Because they might not feel the urge to make human interaction, they are just attracted more to technology.