How social network has bad effect on people - Essay Example

positive advantages, social media does have a number of drawbacks on individuals and society alike and it is important for these drawbacks to be analyzed so as to better understand how these negative drawbacks can be avoided. Although the use of social media has been noted to have a positive effect on our social lives as it enables us to easily keep in-touch with each other, of note however is that a number of negative effects are associated with it; social media is thought to cause it to be difficult for individuals to distinguish the positive and meaningful relationships that they are able to foster in the real world, and the myriad of causal relationships that they form through social media.

We now tend to focus more n the less meaningful social media connections at the expense of the meaningful real life connections that we have made. Although social media has positively impacted our social lives as it has served to provide increased intimacy between friends, this attribute is also being widely used by predators that practice cyber bullying. The devastation that is wrought by online attacks can have the effect of leaving victims with deep emotional scars and as illustrated by a number of well-publicized cases, cyber-bullying has at times resulted in victims being driven to committing suicide (Ryan and Cooper, 115).

Social media has also been noted to have an impact in our social lives as constantly knowing where one’s friends are going, what they are doing or seeing can be deemed as being voyeuristic. If not careful, users can end up comparing themselves to their friends and in the process generating feelings of inadequacy. If they are not engaged in a process whereby they are doing something as exiting or great, they might start feeling worthless as their self esteem gradually becomes dented (Szalay et al. 285). If not careful, users can attempt to try and counteract this by making up stories and in the process find themselves trapped in an ever expanding