It is unsurprising to see people use social media as a way of interacting with their friends, family, co-workers, and even customers. Social media is a tool that many individuals use on a daily basis. There are many platforms that one can employ to communicate – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others. While the purpose of these applications and websites is to provide a space for people to interact, their growing popularity has drastically changed the way people view and understand communication. When talking through Facebook, people no longer need to see or hear each other – in fact, they can be anywhere in the world as long as these places have an Internet connection. This difference in engagement could potentially change one’s ability to interact with other individuals. Sometimes, a negative impact can be seen if people have some issues with mental health or do not know how to control the growing social media trends. Social media has significantly changed relationships between people by eliminating true human connections, affecting people’s mental health, and changing the society’s image.
The use of social media has impacted people’s mental health by both contributing to their anxiety and creating a stressful and competitive platform on which people have to perform. The initial purpose of Twitter or Facebook was to share one’s experiences, talk about different topics, and stay informed about other people’s lives. These features helped people with social anxiety to connect with each other without the need to be physically present in the room full of people. According to Levitan (2017), people with social anxiety, for example, may use social media more often than people who do not experience any stress during communication. However, with time, these platforms evolved, inviting people not to share their thoughts and experiences routinely but to argue with each other or aggressively impose certain ideologies. For example, a culture of one-upmanship developed on many platforms, presenting a perfect image that causes people with anxiety to fear negative feedback from other users (Levitan, 2017). Therefore, those who searched for a safe space on social media encountered anxiety-inducing environments instead.
Online conversations also changed people’s interactions in real life, devaluating and ignoring genuine expressions of emotions. Many people use social media every day for both casual and work-related conversations (Cho, Park, & Ordonez, 2013). Currently, social media is used by almost three-fourths of all adult online users, meaning that millions of people engage in online communications rather often (Wagner, 2015). When interacting online, individuals usually cannot see or hear each other, which takes away their ability to interpret emotions and tones such as sarcasm, anger, or disinterest. Thus, if people regularly interact online without learning to understand these emotions, their real-life connections may be threatened to worsen. Online users may not know a range of social and emotional cues that need to be used during a real-life conversation, limiting their communicative abilities and decreasing the meaningfulness of emotional connections between people (Wagner, 2015). While some online tools may exist to show people’s emotions – emoji or images, they can be treated only as substitutes for a real conversation and cannot teach people how to support a dialogue in real life.
The lack of transparency of information posted by people leads to another problem – people’s narcissism and low self-esteem can be affected by heavily edited and filtered content that creates a perfect version of one’s life. As mentioned above, the culture of one-upmanship may exist on social media, encouraging people to filter their thoughts and self-presentation to seem more successful. This leads to various consequences. Brailovskaia and Margraf (2016) state that Facebook users often have a higher level of narcissism than those who do not engage with this platform. This can be explained by them interpreting other users’ comments and “Likes” as praise. The process of getting such recognition for one’s posts can change people’s view of themselves and raise their self-esteem, although the content they post may be heavily managed (Brailovskaia & Margraf, 2016). While some argue that such interactions contribute to people’s self-understanding and support their relationships with others (Wang & Edwards, 2016), it is clear that this competitive culture has many effects on people’s presentation.
It is clear that human relationships changed with the creation of social media. They became less dependent on real-life conversations and more focused on a heavily edited presentation of one’s image, leading to many people experiencing mental health problems. Social anxiety may have increased due to online conversations being focused on competitiveness and a creation of a perfect picture. The lack of emotional cues took away the possibility to have meaningful relationships for many people. Finally, higher levels of narcissism and dependence on other’s praise further contributed to the culture of one-upmanship. All in all, social media remains a popular way of communication for many people. Therefore, they should be mindful of using such platforms and not forgetting some crucial aspects of a real-life conversation. Social media can be a helpful tool, although its current development can lead to many adverse effects as well.
References
Brailovskaia, J., & Margraf, J. (2016). Comparing Facebook users and Facebook non-users: Relationship between personality traits and mental health variables – An exploratory study. PloS ONE, 11(12), 1-17. Web.
Cho, J., Park, D. J., & Ordonez, Z. (2013). Communication-oriented person-organization fit as a key factor of job-seeking behaviors: Millennials’ social media use and attitudes toward organizational social media policies. Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 16(11), 794-799. Web.
Levitan, J. (2017). Social media use as a predictor of personality. International Journal of Health, Wellness & Society, 7(3), 77-89.
Wagner, L. A. (2015). When your smartphone is too smart for your own good: How social media alters human relationships. Journal of Individual Psychology, 71(2), 114-121.
Wang, V., & Edwards, S. (2016). Strangers are friends I haven’t met yet: A positive approach to young people’s use of social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 19(9), 1204-1219. Web.