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Brian Lee
Professor Rodrick
English 114B
20 February 2016
How Social Media Impacts Our Daily Lives
Technology developed throughout the ages has shaped who we are today. People go
along with what the social media says what we should do. If some famous person or a celebrity
decides that something is cool, people follow what they do because thats how our society works
today. We as human beings on the daily get cyberbullied and become more dependent on social
media. On social media, there are a lot of catfishing going on, making us harder to trust people.
Even though people say that social media has made us a better person or a better community, I
believe that social media has shaped our identity in a more negative way because of
cyberbullying, addiction of social media, catfishing, and people having a herd mentality.
Cyberbullying can happen to anyone, it doesnt matter if youre famous, rich, poor, or
etc. If someone doesnt like you but doesnt have the courage to say it to your face, they will say
it on social media. Cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person
typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. But cyberbullying
doesnt always have to be sending something threatening, it can be humiliation and also people
can hack into their accounts and bully them through their own account. Jenny Q. Ta, a valued
contributor to Business 2 Community explains that If you are not careful, unscrupulous people
can target you for cyber bullying and harassment on social sites. If you are a victim of cyber
bullying, do not take it lying down, but try to take appropriate legal action against the attacker

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(Ta). For the people who say that social media has made them transition into a good person, how
is cyberbullying a good thing? This quote is explaining that if ones getting cyberbullied, he or
she should take legal action because cyberbullying is a serious matter and shouldnt be taken
lightly. Some people have committed suicide because of how upset they got. I personally know
someone who almost committed suicide because he was homosexual. People have been making
fun of him calling him mean names through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This led him to
cut himself. I found out one day that he was cutting himself because he fainted during class and
we checked to see whats wrong and we saw the scars on his wrist. Although people think that
its not that bad to make fun of someone whether its in real life or on social media, that can lead
to some serious matters. Social media gives these cyberbullies a new identity because they
wouldnt say those things in real life because they dont have the guts to but in social media, they
can get away from that kind of reality and become someone that they want to be. Cyberbullying
isnt just what negatively impacts the society, theres also the invasion of privacy.
Privacy is very important to everyone. Without privacy, all our information will be leaked
such as like credit card number, social security number, and etc. Patricia Abril, an assistant
professor at University of Miami in the Business Law department explains that A high school
teacher gets fired for posting her opinions on Facebook of how some residents from her school
are arrogant and snobby (Abril). This example reveals that nothing that one posts online is
private. The teacher had put her profile on private and only a certain people can see the post but
somehow her superiors saw the post and she got fired. Alex Rice, a staff worker at Facebook,
states that We are working to fix the privacy settings on Facebook so that the users feel more
safe and protected (Rice). The users shouldnt even have to worry about being protected
because thats the staffs job and thats what theyre paid to do. If they cant do their job, they

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need to be replaced by someone who do the job or they will lose the customers or users. This is
common sense. This example and quote leads to what we call identity theft. With this lack of
privacy, they can get hacked and once theyre hacked, anyone can leak anything they want or
change what they want to change and when others view her information, they can think
differently about that person. Theres also where social media gets so addicting that people
sacrifice little bit of their privacy to go on social media. Privacy is one of the most important
thing in life but people are so hooked on social media that they would rather go on social media
than have privacy. I mean social media does give benefits like talking to peers who are far away
through social media but privacy gives protection from hackers stealing peoples identity and etc.
Although privacy is important, theres also what we call catfishing.
Catfishing is when someone becomes a fictional online persona that others will want and
lure them into an online relationship. Catfishing is definitely a change in identity because you
become a fake person, making yourself look like someone that others will want but in the end
youre still yourself and when that significant other finds out, it doesnt end well. Catfishing
creates this online profile that lets someone escape from reality and become someone they wish
they were and making themselves believe that they are that fake person and try to make an
intimate relationship with someone else. For example, theres a show called Catfishing on MTV
and its where Nev Schulman, the director, follows the journey of couples who have formed an
online relationship but havent met in reality, meet that significant other and expose them.
Sometimes this exposure leads to a happy ending where the couples actually dont care how they
look like because the time that they spent getting to know each other and their personality or it
leads to an unhappy ending but a reality when one of the partners in the relationship meets the
actual person behind the profile and they are not who they say they are and the relationship ends.

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This is a negative way that impacts daily lives of human beings because some people actually
forms an intimate feeling with that other person but when they find out that theyve been lying
about who they were, they get heartbroken. Theres also the fact that people catfish for revenge.
My friend Trevor got catfished. He met this one girl named Diana. They hit it off online and after
a while they wanted to meet and actually see if they can work on a relationship. They decided to
meet at a caf but she never showed up. After a while, they set up dates where they were
supposed to meet but she never showed up to any of them. It looked like a wild goose chase.
With all the chatting and talking with each other, Trevor fell in love but Diana never existed. It
was a guy named Patrick that Trevor used to bully. After about 3 months, Diana told Trevor
that she didnt want to talk to him anymore and ended things there. The very next day, Patrick
screenshotted every conversation they had and posted it on Facebook. This was very devastating
for Trevor and he didnt show up to school for about a week because he was so embarrassed and
also sad. This false identity that social media lets us create leads to false relationships but also
how social media are like drugs.
I believe that social media are like drugs because it gets addicting and people become
very dependent on it. The picture below shows some of the social media inside syringes. Theres
Facebook, YouTube, and Tumblr. These are not the only social media out there, theres
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and many more. And we go on these social media daily and cant
go a day or week without it. We need to see if someone is spreading rumors or posting new
things. This is when peoples identity changes. When they are on social media, trends are formed
and when they see these trends happen, they start thinking more of a herd mentality. People think
that they need to do the same thing as what others are doing. For example, when I was in middle
school, camo was the mainstream because Kayne West started wearing camo pants and after a

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week, everybody started wearing camo pants because they thought it was cool. Also since
everyone was wearing it, we thought that if we dont wear it we werent cool and might get made
fun of. So when I came to school, I see almost everyone wearing camo pants and I was one of the
few people who didnt wear camo pants. Everyone is unique in their own ways but because of
this herd mentality, our creative minds becomes ruined and we become a follower. Because
social media gets addicting and we cant get enough of it, this has caused us to forget our
manners on the dining table. Back when social media wasnt big, we gathered around the dinner
table and talked to each other on how our days went or if something new and exciting has
happened but instead, were on our phones and communication has been poor. Being on our
phones during dinner used to be a very rude thing to do but since everyone does it, its become
the norm of our society.
Although there are a lot of good events that can come out of social media such as helping
with elections, socialization which is socializing with others whether they are 10 feet away from
you or miles away from you, impact on business, and etc., the cons; catfishing, addiction, trade
of privacy, and cyberbullying outweigh them all. But there are still many ways that social media
can become better such as getting verified on social media just like the celebrities do, limiting
the hours that you can be on social media, fixing privacy issues, and etc. In the end, the good
impacts that social media creates in our society is only temporary but the negative impacts are
permanent.

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(Prishadev).

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Works Cited
Ta, Jenny Q. "What Impact Has Social Media Truly Had On Society."Business2commuinty.
N.p., 13 Aug. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.
Abril, Patricia S., Avner Levin, and Alissa D. Riego. "Blurred Boundaries: Social Media Privacy
and the Twenty-First-Century Employee." By Patricia Snchez Abril, Avner Levin, Alissa
Del Riego. American Business Law Journal, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.
Prishadev. "Selfies, Snapchat, & Cyberbullies." Selfies Snapchat Cyberbullies. Wordpress, 20
Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.
Rice, Alex. "Keeping Users Safe - Facebook for Developers." Facebook Developers. Facebook,
n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.