Negative Essay: The Causes And Effects Of Social Media

Over the past decade, the world has evolved in many different ways. New inventions have created diverse ways for the whole world to connect and improve the world. Out of those inventions, social media is by far the most phenomenal. Social media are a group of websites and applications that allow individuals, companies and users to create and share contents with other social media users.This includes widely used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These social media websites have allowed the world to connect and create a space for meeting new people from all over the world. In fact, there are more than 2.67 billion users online today! It has undeniably brought benefits. However, social media have also had bad influences and caused a lot of problems

The contents on social media can make people compare themselves to others and think lowly of themselves. Through social media, people are able to see other people’s status and activities. This seems to be harmless but, when somebody sees somebody else’s post, they immediately compare themselves to these people. Whether it is a post about going on holiday, their love relationships or successful lives, people envy others without realising their lives are just as valuable as theirs. Psychologists at University of Houston and Palo Alto University say that “people are getting more anxious and depressed due to social comparison” and that at least forty two percent of users are stressed because their feeds, likes and posts were seen as ‘not good.’” Proofs that support this statistic can be seen through the results of a survey that was done in 2011 by Harvard University. It indicated that teenagers using Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook determine how healthy their relationships are with others based on the number of followers, retweets, and “likes” from friends on social media. They take these obscure numbers into their hearts, so if the number of followers or friends is less compared to other people, they feel that they are ‘unpopular’ or think that they have hardly any friends. This leads to anxiety and loss in self-confidence and pride, which can even lead to depression in worst cases. Social media can affect people’s mental well-being adversely through