Negative effects of social media

As we know that everything in this world has pro and con. This is the same as social media.
Social media not only brings positive effects, but also brings negative impacts to us on social
interaction. Nila Eslit (2017) states that one of the negative effects of social media on social
interaction is false sense of connectivity. Sometimes, we can witness a group of friends gather
together but barely talking with each other or everyone is busy looking at their smartphone
rather than speaking to their friends which are in front of them. These are common scenario that
we can find everywhere we go and also known as plugged-in life (Nila Eslit, 2017). Emily Drago
(as cited in Phoon, 2017) explains her findings by stating that an “overwhelming 92% of
respondents believed technology negatively affects face-to-face communication, and only 1%
did not. Only 7% of respondents neither agreed nor disagreed,” and that almost “73% of
students in the dining hall used their phones rather than speaking to one another”. It is clearly
proved that social networking is gradually taking powerful control over us.
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Nowadays, there are less real-life conversations and face-to-face interaction among humans as
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we often communicate with each other through social media, such as Facebook, Instagram,
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Twitter, Snapchat and so on. People are more likely to build relationship online and drifting
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away from the real world into virtual world. Nila Eslit (2017) explains that people used to clean
up complicated and messy human relationships with technology. By doing this, we are giving up
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on the essential using of verbal and non-verbal communication in online socialization. This
results in weak understanding in these communications that leads to a lack of ability to connect
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with each other. Hence, it reduces our ability to strengthen meaningful relationships in the real
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world.
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Phoon (2017) explains that social media “has robbed people’s ability to find trust and comfort
in one another, replacing our need for warm, supportive interaction and fellowship with a virtual,
hollow connection”. Most of the people will just depends on the virtual friends on social media
instead of sharing with the friends who are always beside them. Amedie (as cited in Phoon,
2017) states that while social media has many positives influences, it also “robs us from self-
control and from the ability to think independently and instead makes us gullible to join any
group that posts perverse messages that tickle our ear and amuse our senses without
evaluating the consequences”. Amedie (as cited in Phoon, 2017) also claims that, “ironically,
social media is in effect turning us into one of the most antisocial generations”.

Through social media, we can express our recent feelings or share recent conditions by post
pictures or type in words. Everyone has their freedom to comment on anyone posts and some
of them misused social media by attacking other people with harsh comments. This will

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 definitely lead to cyberbullying and cyber harassment. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying that is
only done through the web and other technologies (Idrees Ahmad, 2015). Nila Eslit (2017)
explains that children and teenagers are vulnerable to cyberbullying since the different social
media platforms are easily to be accessed by anyone. With so many children and teenagers are
using social media nowadays, they are easily become target of cyberbullying.

“The destruction of either these attacks can leave profound emotional and mental scars on the
victim. It’s not unfamiliar to hear about children committing suicide because of trauma.”(Nila
Eslit, 2017). It seems that children need more attention regards this issue since their mentally
are still not strong enough to against those cruel comments on social media. When they get hurt
by those comments, they might avoid facing or interacting with other people because they will
care about how other people see them. This will indirectly reduce their confidence and self-
esteem while communication with other people.

Social media is not only help to maintain a relationship, but also create conflict in a relationship.
“Since social networking sites make it easy for someone to check up on what things their
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significant other is doing, this can create jealousy and uncertainty in a relationship. If a
significant other is “liking” or commenting on someone else’s pictures then that may make their
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partner jealous and create tension in the relationship.” (Wikerson, 2017). The jealousy may
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cause conflict among the couples because they feel insecure and uncertain in a relationship.
According to Buunk & Dijkstra (as cited in Wikerson, 2017), women tend to be more jealous of
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emotional infidelity than men and men tend to be more jealous of sexual infidelity than women.
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When the conflict becomes more serious, it may end a relationship. Sometimes, the couples
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feel uneasiness to break up with face-to-face communication, so they tend to use social media
as a platform to break up with their partner. According to Weisskirch & Delevi (as cited in
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Wikerson, 2017), breaking up over the phone can be looked at as term avoidance via distant
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communication. Wikerson (2017) explains that “when partners break up social networking sites
can be a cause for concern because the relationship is still imprinted into Facebook in a number
of ways. After the couple has broken up and changed their relationship status, there can still be
artefacts from the relationship left on social media such as pictures together, messages, etc.”
Hence, social media can easily affect the interaction between the couples and lead to break up.

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