Social Media Is Destroying People's Lives

Social media is destroying people’s lives, in many aspects

Since the 21st century, the internet grows sharply to become the essential component in daily life. Social networking site, or SNS, especially, created a whole new way of communication. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram collected billions of active users. Facebook alone, is now having over 2 billion monthly active users in 2017 (Facebook, 2017). Moreover, people are using social network frequently; research conducted by an Australia marketing company Sensis (2017) shows that near 60% of Australians use social networking sites at least once a day, a 35% use more than five times a day. While people are treating SNS a must have in the modern era, the real picture is that

SNSs provides a platform to allow users to post anything they want, it might sound attractive, but the historically worldwide information sharing platform can be a danger for individuals. The so call free-of-charge social networking sites are not free at all; the user becomes the product of the social networking sites by exposing individual data to the public. Social media websites’ revenue is mostly from providing reasonable price, well-targeted advertisements. The process of SNSs target the audience is entirely based on the contribution of users; the more active people are, the more data SNSs grasp. Facebook Likes, the iconic function of Facebook, “can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views.” (Kosinski, Stillwell, & Graepel, 2013) Besides the SNSs, the user’s activities online can also be easily tracked by others. The locations, photos, or any single word a user share can be the source for a complete stranger to collect personal data, preferences or even daily activities. This kind of online stalking action can even transform into online harassment, cyberbully, or ultimately real-life crimes, threatening users safety and lives. To reduce the risk exposure of user’s private data, lowering the activeness on social media is the most straightforward

Frequent use of SNS can make people more connected to each other and enhance the quality of relationships. However, the link between the using social media and improving relationships varies. In a family, SNS use can improve family leisure and increase the sense of belonging. Oppositely, it can also decrease time and quality of family interactions. (Sharaievska, & Stodolska, 2016) The offline social capital (Abbas, & Mesch, 2016) and personal characteristic (Kraut, et. al., 2002) are the factors of the communication outcome when using social media. Suppose a user being introvert in real-life, his or her bad social skills and a handful of offline friends can cause low satisfaction of using SNSs. However, a study shows people with high frequency of using SNSs are three times more likely to feel lonely than those who have lower social media use. (Primack, et. al., 2017) The high-frequency use of social media is easier for any users to have lonesome experience online instead of feeling more