Minimize the Use of Social Media: The Silent Killer of the Century
Minimize the Use of Social Media: The Silent Killer of the Century
The Issue
Introduction:
In our time today, in the 21st century, we can't deny the fact that technology had taken over the world. From making our everyday lives easier and convenient to making the communication all around the world attainable and usable for all people to making us entertained and easily aware to the things that happens in our community, country and the world. But amongst the different modern technologies produced and invented, one stood at the top, that brought the total change in lives of all people, in how they perceive reality, the social media.
Social Media is considered as one of the most useful in terms of communication and in delivering latest news all around the world, but it is also one of the most powerful tool every man can use. From delivering messages quickly across the globe, transfering files in virtual world, acquiring new informations in a nick of time, meeting new people whom we didn't even know.
Social media totally changed the way we live, the way we perceive reality and on how we do things than before. Seeing the front of the curtain, social media may seem giving us useful things that totally leaped us many years into the technological advancement but this take a toll into silently harming us in many ways, especially the youths.
Statement of the Problem:
Social media had taken the world by total surprise. With its overwhelming benefits in ourselves, most of the youths are drowning with it that they don't even know how to overcome with it. As this technological advancement provided by social media to the life, it totally taken over the world of the youths that totally resulted to the following:
- Spending More Time on Social Media - The biggest problem of social media on people is the time they spend on social media. Many people are more on their social media networks than their other activities and may lead them to be addicted on social media (Singh, 2018). The unbalanced use of time may directly or indirectly lead to other problems in life such as, procrastination, lack of productivity, health issues and neglect on responsibilities.
- The Downfall of Real Socialization - Some people find it convenient to just talk through their phones and not talk in front of the person. It feels more alienated because of the virtual connection that people make than just seeing each other eye to eye, seeing their emotions or reactions and make the interaction more genuine. (Strober, 2016)
- Loneliness Epidemic - Due to the influence of social media, many people are spending their time to cope to their problems or just to escape from reality. This leads to people spending their time alone and to connect the previous point earlier, less time to socialize on others and will produce to isolation to the real world.
- Social Media made Depression Looks Cool - the primary users of today's social media is totally dominated by only two generations, millenial and Gen. Z. In just span of 3 years, the cases of depression was totally rose up to 47% alongside the development of social media. According to Dr. Gia Sison, millennial influencer and mental health advocate, youths are romanticizing depression, in a way that they are imposing that they are depressed because it's cute and it's what's in. This damning effect invalidates the people who really are experiencing this kind of illness and most youths are just taking it as a joke.
Statistics:
Globally, the number of social media users in 2019 is 3.484 Billion based on the We Are Social and Hootsuite’s statistics. Then every year, there is an increase of 9%. Pew Research Center’s survey showed that there are substantial differences in social media use by age. 88% of ages ranging in 18 to 29 years old respondents uses any form of social media. In comparing to that, 78% of the 30 to 49 year old respondents uses social media. The said percentage of the youth is undeniable due to the access to a computer (88%) at home of most high school students. Moreover, nearly all teenagers, between ages 13 to 17 (95%), own a smartphone.
On the other hand, In terms of global use of social media, Filipinos continue to reign supreme. It is the Philippines’ fourth year in a row topping in social media use worldwide. A report from the creative agency We Are Social and social media management platform Hootsuite found that Filipinos spend most of their time on the internet and social media sites. The "Digital 2019: Global Digital Overview" revealed that Filipinos usually spend more than four hours each day on social media. Moreover, the total use of social media worldwide is 2 hours, 16 minutes but last year, the Philippines placed second in terms of internet use, with users spending an average of 9 hours, 29 minutes on the internet daily.
Based on a study of Russel Viner, they examined lifestyle, health, well-being, and use of technology of nearly 10,000 adolescents in England over 13-16 years old. Frequent social media users in the sample rose from 43% to 69% of boys and from 51% to 75% of girls. Statistical analysis of the results showed that more participation in social media was associated with greater psychological distress in sexes.
Philosophical View:
The advent of a modern society gave rise to a better communication network that connects everyone around the globe which created a virtual society. Perhaps one interesting effect of a virtual society is that virtually everyone is connected to a global network where they can see and interact with what's happening around the world without having the need to get out of a boundary to take a look at what's happening.
Let’s go take a look at one of the most common negative effect of social media. Addiction to social media is prevalent among people, particularly among its so-called most susceptible victims, the youth. Addiction in general is caused by people’s desire to escape their problems in the real world once they realized that they couldn’t achieve their expectations of a perfect world and perceive the world as a dystopian society, particularly when considering the current socio-political climate of the world. People treat social media like a form of escapism and a temporary solution to their problems, avoiding their problem entirely which then contributes to the existence of their problems.
Let’s not victim-blame here. What these people need is help because what people call “addicts” to social media are suffering from various problems in life, from depression to even larger problems to the extent of socio-political levels, and they are heading on to the wrong path. With a virtual society where everyone can participate, helping them through social media is easier than before. Social media can be a great way to alleviate their suffering, where they will be easier to be encouraged to live life outside social media and fix the underlying problems that cause their suffering.
Consequences:
There is no doubt that social media can give us many things that we can utilize to improve and develop our skills, our knowledge and others but as what Edna Ferber said "Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little". Being always on social media is common to our society today but this comes with a price. It affect most of the youths through physical, mental, emotional and social.
- Addiction on Social Media - Today, many youths are on their phones and spending their time looking at social media rather than interacting with their families, friends, and loved ones, to the extent that they didn't even know to themselves that they slowly drowning to dark depth of social media and totally forgot to socialize.
- Mental Obsession - If in the past few years, obsession only refers to constant thinking of a person to something (Merriam Webster, 2019) especially food, but today, obsession can also happen because of social media where the youth are obsessed with likes and comments that they will do anything to get them and to get some form of approval from strangers to make them feel loved or popular. Since they cannot get the same love in real life like they do in social media, they dedicate their live fully to it.
- Reduced Productivity - commonly known as "laziness". This is because social media is a very vast platform full of new hot topics, news and informations and we don't want to be left alone to the extent that we can't even leave our phone for a minute just to do simple things (Bachchan, 2017). With this so much distractions, youths cannot fully concentrate to their task and resort to procrastinating their projects, assignments, chores and other responsibilities.
Since social media can be considered information superhighway, this only means that anyone has access to this superhighway, can place information and also can grab information (Innovative Training Works, Inc., 2019) thus making social media a place of crimes.
- Cyberbullying - This is mainly the first crime that comes to our mind when social media is being said. Some people are being poked fun at by their insecurities such as looks, religion, or social status. Thus, the one being bullied may get into serious mental health problems such as depression.
- Identity Theft - Personal information on social media are dangerous to put out because it is easy to trace anyone on their location, school and other social media information. This was not a problem before, but in today's generation, youths are so open to social media that they posts every event, every occasion, everything they are doing that give criminals an opening for stealing their identities.
Solutions:
- Set limits - Set time limits like an hour or two in using social media. Set time limits for how long you’ll spend on your laptop, tablet or phone – even if you are doing other things on that device and are not using social media.
- Reduce the number of your “friends” and upload less content - less friends means less vulnerability. In this step, you should unfriend or unfollow those friends and followers of yours that doesn't do anything to your life. This will result to lesser obsession with monitoring your social media for notifications. Moreover, you should start uploading lesser content. It is not your responsibility to update everyone everyday and lesser uploaded contents will not make you not updated.
- Don’t be fooled - Don't be fooled by those beautiful faces, sexy bodies, etc of your friends and followers. Don’t take everything you see on social media at face value. It’s important to understand that posts can be misleading because they present only partial views of other people's lives. Remember, netizens will not post something that can destroy their own image.
- Develop and exercise self control - Self control will be very challenging in each and everyone of us because of the social media's immediate accessibility. Truly, it is difficult to resist temptations. You can start by lessening the pages you follow that totally updates you to things that don't even help you and keep the pages that you think will improve and enhance your knowledge and wisdom, and minimize the people you follow to only your classmates, close friends and families. With this method, it allows you to only things that are necessary for your life and remove the unwanted things in your social media life. Remember that "it is not necessary to react to everything you see".
- Remember reality - Social media connects people. But the connection of people in real life is very different. Start connecting again with other people without the use of any kinds of gadgets. Leave your virtual world once in a while and then talk, laugh, wave, etc for real again. Social media was created mainly to make communications and informations to deliver easier, not to replace it.
Benefits and Beneficiaries:
Once youths start to control themselves from using social media, they will have more time for more important things like time for their family and friends. Moreover, if they will start to reduce their friends or followers in their social media account, youths will avoid themselves from comparing to others. It is from scientists that discovered that most people who use social media end up comparing themselves to the lives of everyone they know. As for conversations, it will have more sincerity than ever because they will see their true reactions and expressions.
While limiting social media use is a good solution, use that time to utilize and maximize the benefits of social media (e.g connecting to the virtual society and using social media as a platform for social change). The benefits of social media will not be utilized in an effective way if people still mostly use their limited time on social media for the same activities that affects them negatively.
This may seem to you to be stepping back, but this will totally set back the way we use social media. Sometimes we must take a step back and ask - does social media truly gives us goodness?
The benefit will not be only for the youth itself. The people who surrounds the youth will also be benefitted.
Summary and Conclusion:
We totally see and experiencing today the great benefits of social media in our daily lives, instant delivery of messages, quick scope in wide range of news all-around the globe, and can even do our daily tasks in one click. This sudden entry of social totally alters what is natural to us, youths, from writing letter to someone to just send a private message online, from spending time in library reading books for references in your homework to just one click google search. We are not saying that we must totally abandon social media but we must wake up that we are all using it in a wrong way, in a wrong purpose, in a wrong manner.
Have you ever had lunch with your peers and notice that there is no conversation at all? That every single one of you are browsing your phones looking at your own social media accounts or entertaining yourself with games online? Looking around and seeing people like a lamp post that is bended in the top end? Like the logo of Facebook? We can't deny the fact that this sudden change also gave us sudden effects that if left unsolved will only make our lives more difficult than easier.
Social media was created and still developed to IMPROVE our lives, not to REPLACE the things that must be innate in society and CHANGE the way the things must be done.
"We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is HOW WE WILL DO IT" - Erik Qualman
References:
ABS-CBN News (2019), "Filipinos Still World's Top Social Media User - Study", cited from: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-userstudyfbclid=IwAR0tFee0yNw5f0Eme9huKwFJ23HvhjWj3zf9IAQ503NbzVsRUiAq-a12910
Anderson, M., Smith, A. (2018), "Social Media Use in 2018"
Brogunier, T. (2019), “4 Reasons Why Social Media Has Become So Toxic and What to Look for Next”, Entrepreneur Asia Pacific
Chaffey, D. (2019), "Global Social Media - Research Summary 2019"
Chavez, H., "9 Positive Benefits of a Social Media Detox"
Gordon, S. (2019), “Surprising Ways Your Teen Benefits from Social Media”, cited from: https://www.verywellfamily.com/benefits-of-social-media-4067431
Lasin, G. (2018), “Social Media Has Made Depression Look Cool – And It’s A Problem”
Singh, H. (2018), “20 Social Media Problems and Solutions in Society Today”
Tarafdar, M. (2018), "Social media: six steps to take back control"
Terrell, K. (2015), “The History of Social Media: Social Networking Evolution”
*from the Web:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/328749
32
The Issue
Introduction:
In our time today, in the 21st century, we can't deny the fact that technology had taken over the world. From making our everyday lives easier and convenient to making the communication all around the world attainable and usable for all people to making us entertained and easily aware to the things that happens in our community, country and the world. But amongst the different modern technologies produced and invented, one stood at the top, that brought the total change in lives of all people, in how they perceive reality, the social media.
Social Media is considered as one of the most useful in terms of communication and in delivering latest news all around the world, but it is also one of the most powerful tool every man can use. From delivering messages quickly across the globe, transfering files in virtual world, acquiring new informations in a nick of time, meeting new people whom we didn't even know.
Social media totally changed the way we live, the way we perceive reality and on how we do things than before. Seeing the front of the curtain, social media may seem giving us useful things that totally leaped us many years into the technological advancement but this take a toll into silently harming us in many ways, especially the youths.
Statement of the Problem:
Social media had taken the world by total surprise. With its overwhelming benefits in ourselves, most of the youths are drowning with it that they don't even know how to overcome with it. As this technological advancement provided by social media to the life, it totally taken over the world of the youths that totally resulted to the following:
- Spending More Time on Social Media - The biggest problem of social media on people is the time they spend on social media. Many people are more on their social media networks than their other activities and may lead them to be addicted on social media (Singh, 2018). The unbalanced use of time may directly or indirectly lead to other problems in life such as, procrastination, lack of productivity, health issues and neglect on responsibilities.
- The Downfall of Real Socialization - Some people find it convenient to just talk through their phones and not talk in front of the person. It feels more alienated because of the virtual connection that people make than just seeing each other eye to eye, seeing their emotions or reactions and make the interaction more genuine. (Strober, 2016)
- Loneliness Epidemic - Due to the influence of social media, many people are spending their time to cope to their problems or just to escape from reality. This leads to people spending their time alone and to connect the previous point earlier, less time to socialize on others and will produce to isolation to the real world.
- Social Media made Depression Looks Cool - the primary users of today's social media is totally dominated by only two generations, millenial and Gen. Z. In just span of 3 years, the cases of depression was totally rose up to 47% alongside the development of social media. According to Dr. Gia Sison, millennial influencer and mental health advocate, youths are romanticizing depression, in a way that they are imposing that they are depressed because it's cute and it's what's in. This damning effect invalidates the people who really are experiencing this kind of illness and most youths are just taking it as a joke.
Statistics:
Globally, the number of social media users in 2019 is 3.484 Billion based on the We Are Social and Hootsuite’s statistics. Then every year, there is an increase of 9%. Pew Research Center’s survey showed that there are substantial differences in social media use by age. 88% of ages ranging in 18 to 29 years old respondents uses any form of social media. In comparing to that, 78% of the 30 to 49 year old respondents uses social media. The said percentage of the youth is undeniable due to the access to a computer (88%) at home of most high school students. Moreover, nearly all teenagers, between ages 13 to 17 (95%), own a smartphone.
On the other hand, In terms of global use of social media, Filipinos continue to reign supreme. It is the Philippines’ fourth year in a row topping in social media use worldwide. A report from the creative agency We Are Social and social media management platform Hootsuite found that Filipinos spend most of their time on the internet and social media sites. The "Digital 2019: Global Digital Overview" revealed that Filipinos usually spend more than four hours each day on social media. Moreover, the total use of social media worldwide is 2 hours, 16 minutes but last year, the Philippines placed second in terms of internet use, with users spending an average of 9 hours, 29 minutes on the internet daily.
Based on a study of Russel Viner, they examined lifestyle, health, well-being, and use of technology of nearly 10,000 adolescents in England over 13-16 years old. Frequent social media users in the sample rose from 43% to 69% of boys and from 51% to 75% of girls. Statistical analysis of the results showed that more participation in social media was associated with greater psychological distress in sexes.
Philosophical View:
The advent of a modern society gave rise to a better communication network that connects everyone around the globe which created a virtual society. Perhaps one interesting effect of a virtual society is that virtually everyone is connected to a global network where they can see and interact with what's happening around the world without having the need to get out of a boundary to take a look at what's happening.
Let’s go take a look at one of the most common negative effect of social media. Addiction to social media is prevalent among people, particularly among its so-called most susceptible victims, the youth. Addiction in general is caused by people’s desire to escape their problems in the real world once they realized that they couldn’t achieve their expectations of a perfect world and perceive the world as a dystopian society, particularly when considering the current socio-political climate of the world. People treat social media like a form of escapism and a temporary solution to their problems, avoiding their problem entirely which then contributes to the existence of their problems.
Let’s not victim-blame here. What these people need is help because what people call “addicts” to social media are suffering from various problems in life, from depression to even larger problems to the extent of socio-political levels, and they are heading on to the wrong path. With a virtual society where everyone can participate, helping them through social media is easier than before. Social media can be a great way to alleviate their suffering, where they will be easier to be encouraged to live life outside social media and fix the underlying problems that cause their suffering.
Consequences:
There is no doubt that social media can give us many things that we can utilize to improve and develop our skills, our knowledge and others but as what Edna Ferber said "Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little". Being always on social media is common to our society today but this comes with a price. It affect most of the youths through physical, mental, emotional and social.
- Addiction on Social Media - Today, many youths are on their phones and spending their time looking at social media rather than interacting with their families, friends, and loved ones, to the extent that they didn't even know to themselves that they slowly drowning to dark depth of social media and totally forgot to socialize.
- Mental Obsession - If in the past few years, obsession only refers to constant thinking of a person to something (Merriam Webster, 2019) especially food, but today, obsession can also happen because of social media where the youth are obsessed with likes and comments that they will do anything to get them and to get some form of approval from strangers to make them feel loved or popular. Since they cannot get the same love in real life like they do in social media, they dedicate their live fully to it.
- Reduced Productivity - commonly known as "laziness". This is because social media is a very vast platform full of new hot topics, news and informations and we don't want to be left alone to the extent that we can't even leave our phone for a minute just to do simple things (Bachchan, 2017). With this so much distractions, youths cannot fully concentrate to their task and resort to procrastinating their projects, assignments, chores and other responsibilities.
Since social media can be considered information superhighway, this only means that anyone has access to this superhighway, can place information and also can grab information (Innovative Training Works, Inc., 2019) thus making social media a place of crimes.
- Cyberbullying - This is mainly the first crime that comes to our mind when social media is being said. Some people are being poked fun at by their insecurities such as looks, religion, or social status. Thus, the one being bullied may get into serious mental health problems such as depression.
- Identity Theft - Personal information on social media are dangerous to put out because it is easy to trace anyone on their location, school and other social media information. This was not a problem before, but in today's generation, youths are so open to social media that they posts every event, every occasion, everything they are doing that give criminals an opening for stealing their identities.
Solutions:
- Set limits - Set time limits like an hour or two in using social media. Set time limits for how long you’ll spend on your laptop, tablet or phone – even if you are doing other things on that device and are not using social media.
- Reduce the number of your “friends” and upload less content - less friends means less vulnerability. In this step, you should unfriend or unfollow those friends and followers of yours that doesn't do anything to your life. This will result to lesser obsession with monitoring your social media for notifications. Moreover, you should start uploading lesser content. It is not your responsibility to update everyone everyday and lesser uploaded contents will not make you not updated.
- Don’t be fooled - Don't be fooled by those beautiful faces, sexy bodies, etc of your friends and followers. Don’t take everything you see on social media at face value. It’s important to understand that posts can be misleading because they present only partial views of other people's lives. Remember, netizens will not post something that can destroy their own image.
- Develop and exercise self control - Self control will be very challenging in each and everyone of us because of the social media's immediate accessibility. Truly, it is difficult to resist temptations. You can start by lessening the pages you follow that totally updates you to things that don't even help you and keep the pages that you think will improve and enhance your knowledge and wisdom, and minimize the people you follow to only your classmates, close friends and families. With this method, it allows you to only things that are necessary for your life and remove the unwanted things in your social media life. Remember that "it is not necessary to react to everything you see".
- Remember reality - Social media connects people. But the connection of people in real life is very different. Start connecting again with other people without the use of any kinds of gadgets. Leave your virtual world once in a while and then talk, laugh, wave, etc for real again. Social media was created mainly to make communications and informations to deliver easier, not to replace it.
Benefits and Beneficiaries:
Once youths start to control themselves from using social media, they will have more time for more important things like time for their family and friends. Moreover, if they will start to reduce their friends or followers in their social media account, youths will avoid themselves from comparing to others. It is from scientists that discovered that most people who use social media end up comparing themselves to the lives of everyone they know. As for conversations, it will have more sincerity than ever because they will see their true reactions and expressions.
While limiting social media use is a good solution, use that time to utilize and maximize the benefits of social media (e.g connecting to the virtual society and using social media as a platform for social change). The benefits of social media will not be utilized in an effective way if people still mostly use their limited time on social media for the same activities that affects them negatively.
This may seem to you to be stepping back, but this will totally set back the way we use social media. Sometimes we must take a step back and ask - does social media truly gives us goodness?
The benefit will not be only for the youth itself. The people who surrounds the youth will also be benefitted.
Summary and Conclusion:
We totally see and experiencing today the great benefits of social media in our daily lives, instant delivery of messages, quick scope in wide range of news all-around the globe, and can even do our daily tasks in one click. This sudden entry of social totally alters what is natural to us, youths, from writing letter to someone to just send a private message online, from spending time in library reading books for references in your homework to just one click google search. We are not saying that we must totally abandon social media but we must wake up that we are all using it in a wrong way, in a wrong purpose, in a wrong manner.
Have you ever had lunch with your peers and notice that there is no conversation at all? That every single one of you are browsing your phones looking at your own social media accounts or entertaining yourself with games online? Looking around and seeing people like a lamp post that is bended in the top end? Like the logo of Facebook? We can't deny the fact that this sudden change also gave us sudden effects that if left unsolved will only make our lives more difficult than easier.
Social media was created and still developed to IMPROVE our lives, not to REPLACE the things that must be innate in society and CHANGE the way the things must be done.
"We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is HOW WE WILL DO IT" - Erik Qualman
References:
ABS-CBN News (2019), "Filipinos Still World's Top Social Media User - Study", cited from: https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/01/31/19/filipinos-still-worlds-top-social-media-userstudyfbclid=IwAR0tFee0yNw5f0Eme9huKwFJ23HvhjWj3zf9IAQ503NbzVsRUiAq-a12910
Anderson, M., Smith, A. (2018), "Social Media Use in 2018"
Brogunier, T. (2019), “4 Reasons Why Social Media Has Become So Toxic and What to Look for Next”, Entrepreneur Asia Pacific
Chaffey, D. (2019), "Global Social Media - Research Summary 2019"
Chavez, H., "9 Positive Benefits of a Social Media Detox"
Gordon, S. (2019), “Surprising Ways Your Teen Benefits from Social Media”, cited from: https://www.verywellfamily.com/benefits-of-social-media-4067431
Lasin, G. (2018), “Social Media Has Made Depression Look Cool – And It’s A Problem”
Singh, H. (2018), “20 Social Media Problems and Solutions in Society Today”
Tarafdar, M. (2018), "Social media: six steps to take back control"
Terrell, K. (2015), “The History of Social Media: Social Networking Evolution”
*from the Web:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/328749
32
The Decision Makers
Petition created on October 15, 2019