By Tiffany Blossey
Social media has become a very essential and common factor in our everyday life. It helps us keep up with family, friends, celebrities, pass time in socially awkward situations, and keep our minds stimulated when we are bored. While social media can be a good thing, it is also an unbelievably bad addiction to have. On a lot of occasions, it has become more of an obsession.
Social media can lead to a variety of mental and physical health problems. You are able to share your opinions, feelings, and pictures, but a lot of that can lead to unnecessary dramatic issues. You have models and celebrities sharing their perfect lives and perfect bodies on their pages and a lot of people are wondering why they are not pretty enough, skinny enough, social enough. This has the potential to lead to eating disorders and depression if people try to live up to these lavish lifestyles of the people they follow.
Another thing social media is ruining ironically is our ability to become social. Just think when is the last time you went out to dinner or a social gathering with your spouse or your friends and one of you didn’t reach in your pocket or purse pull out your electronic? When was the last time you went to a concert and you weren’t one of the thousands of people with their phones in the air trying to get the perfect picture? Most relationships are missing a huge factor and that is communication, people would rather tweet their feelings rather than take it straight to the source and fix the issue. All you must do is just be present, live in the moment, and listen.
Lastly, social media prohibits and distracts you from giving your full potential at your job or school. When you are asked to perform a task whether it be at work or school, they require your full undivided attention. If you are checking your notifications, replying to a quick tweet or Facebook post it is taking away from your concentration as a student or employee there in fact meaning you are wasting your company’s time and money. Tasks are being put on the back burner and grades are slipping.
Unfortunately, I think we have gotten to a point of no return, and we cannot undo the damage it has already caused to our lives and the lives of the ones around us. In the future, all we can do to be better is just to be aware of our personal social media usage and just live for the moment, not the number of notifications or likes.
WOW! Made me think about my own personal use of social media!