With the world evolving comes new inventions to make our lives much easier, however, technology has taken away the norm of face-to-face interaction when it comes to social networks.
As people, we no longer value the face-to-face conversations because our heads are always down looking at our cellphones. Among other things, social media has turned our daily lives into tell-all tales as well as recklessness involving texting while driving because of addiction.
Social Media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities.
This might be so but it has made us vulnerable because we now share almost everything that is happening in our daily lives, making us targets to people who might want to harm us. People are now constantly being ridiculed on social media, of how they dress, how they look, hate speech is also a factor as well as cyberbullying. In regards to how people look, they are mostly judged by the selfies they take which are most of the time are edited by using filters, they may be criticized for using filters because according to them it might be misleading seeing that they do not look like they do on their pictures in real life.
As social media users we are addicted to many social networks that really take away our time, we constantly need to check our cell phones for instant Whatsapp texts which may delay whatever we were busy with at that particular time. Whatsapp as a social network is a great distraction because messages just pop up on the home screen and as a user you would want to read and respond at that particular time.
Nowadays memes are the “it” thing on social media, Facebook comes into play when it comes to memes because there are even pages which have people that run them to upload the latest memes or funny videos on a daily basis. As a Facebook user you have the urge to constantly log in to check out what people have posted on their timelines which is mostly centered on humour, also, people are using the platform to air their personal problems or share their most unfortunate incidences that they come across on a daily basis.
Being on Social Media also comes with the pressure of being exposed certain lifestyles that people try to portray. To say the least it actually categorizes us as the society, for instance Instagram is presumably known to be used by people who are well off and have very lavish lifestyles. Some young women are now Instagram models and get paid to advertise fashion clothing as well as promoting certain products of brand companies.
Twitter is known for being a platform that is certainly not for the faint hearted, “Black Twitter” as it is mostly referred to be the most gruesome type of social media because people need to watch what they say. One can be humiliated if they tweet something that the rest does not agree with. There is no room for freedom of speech or expression on Twitter because one gets crucified for having an opinion. The sad thing about Twitter is the hurtful things that people say to one another where it is all over for the world to see. This can negatively affect people’s self-esteem.
The new era might have brought us advanced technology which makes communication effective but also the effect it has brought upon society is unbearable. People no longer talk in person but find it easier to communicate on social media among other things.
