Social Media Essay

Rochell Battle

Professor Warren

ENC 1102

12 February 2013

Social Media

Social media has become a common way of life. In the beginning, there were sites such as MySpace, Bebo, & Facebook. Social media has captivated the attention of every living generation. Children are using the internet for more of entertainment and less of education purposes.

            Social media has influenced a great amount of children therefore parents should monitor the different social media websites. The outside world is becoming scarcer than ever because people would rather sit in doors and communicate with strangers that they will most likely never meet then to go outdoors and meet new people face to face. Social media has taken over the minds and lives of our younger society.

Instant fame is the name of the game and more than a little is aspiring to gain it, doing whatever it takes while using the powerful tool of social media. People try to display themselves as prefect individuals but in reality, they are totally the opposite. The worse thing about it is younger children try so hard to portray what they are shown. It’s obvious if there were more positive people being constantly pushed down their throats like they do the negative people, our generation would have a better understanding of what is right and what is wrong. They no longer understand that you are not supposed to be perfect. There is an old saying “too much of anything can kill you”, a lot of famous people have killed their careers from exposing too much. Not only have famous people killed their career, normal people have broken up their families, relationships, and friendships all in the name of social media. The world need to aware that the federal government is managing these sites (USA.gov. 2013).

In recent years, studies have shown students who used social networking sites while studying scored 20% lower on tests. Students who used social media had an average GPA of 3.06 when there are non-users who had an average GPA of 3.82. Parents and teachers both have stressed their concern on how much time children are now spending on the internet. Although some like to argue by saying the use is for educational purposes, the point is invalid. There is no way teens who already complain about doing school work spend that much time on the internet for educational use; the proof is in the numbers (ProCon.org).

There has been a shift in the way families’ have communicated in the past and how they communicate now. It’s very common to get Facebook wall posts instead of phone calls. Things that could be said face to face are now texted, tweeted, or received by instant messages. People tend to state that they are lonely and use social networking as an outlet to their loneliness, but in all honestly they are lonely because they chose to be (ProCon.org).

Social networking has created this idea of another world. People have conversations, relationships, best friends, and even play competitive sports online. The only different is there isn’t any physical connection, so to speak. People have gotten so wrapped up in the idea of things that they never experience what it’s really like. Social networking display things in life differently than what it really is. For example, people have this idea that love is supposed to be perfect. Relationships that is dysfunctional in real life but displayed perfect online. They never tweet about the breakups, arguments, or any other things a normal relationship will have to overcome. So, now we have females 13 and up looking for something that is really not attainable. They want the perfect outcome results right then and there without putting in any effort. But, what they don’t understand is everything takes time; nothing is accomplished overnight (Dwyer, 2007).

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Overall, social media has been around for many years and it is here to stay. Every place of business, home, school, boy, girl, mother, and father use social media in some shape of form. Our society is growing faster when it comes to technology. Social networking targets at all types of audience. Children and Parents are able to communicate more than ever by having some type of technology devices such as cell phones, computers, I-pads, and tablets. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Dwyer, C. (2007) “Digital Relationships in the 'MySpace' Generation: Results From a Qualitative Study.”Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Hawaii, 2007.

http://socialnetworking.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005132#10

USA.gov. (2013).Verify U.S. Federal Government Social Media Accounts

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/verify-social-media.shtml