Good morning everyone. first of all, I would like to thank all of you for coming.

My name is vu
and what I want to do today to discuss the ever so controversial issue of social media usage,
more specifically amongst teenagers, the pros and cons of it and then present my opinion on the
matter
In today’s world, the impact that social media has on our lives is nothing to gloss over. While
it has been attributed to an array of obvious benefits, I believe that it is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand a surfeit usage of social media to the detriment of other activities such as
socializing with friends face to face should be eschewed as it can lead to many devastating
consequences namely mental illnesses, depression, insecurity….
Human beings are social creatures, we crave acceptance, connections and social media was
supposed to fufill that demand but has transpired to make us feel disconnected, lonely or even
depressed. The fact that we have many people in our social network does not mean we belong.
Not everything you see on social media is the truth. I want you to imagine a beep and its your
phone, you frantically look for it and lo and behold you got a notification, someone responded to
your post. You feel validated, loved you feel happy, affirmed, you feel like you matter... for a
moment that is. The feeling soon goes away and once more you feel hungry for those feelings
once again and you keep on making new posts showcasing yourself in the best light possible
even if in reality its not really like that since with social media you can make the choice to only
show the best. the vicious cycle continues. I myself am guilty of this, and some of you here too.
This might be just me but when i got into cnn, i made a post about it on facebook and people
were congratulating me all over from friends to teachers and family members. I felt ecstatic,
responding and reacting every single comments and replies. While this is not a good thing to
perputuate, we can’t just stop using it social media.
But in some cases, the responses to your online behaviors wont be just positive, you can face
backlashes, critics and that eventually scales into cyberbullying. An infamous case of this
phenomenon is the situation of Hana Kimura. Hana Kimura was a japanse female professional
wrestler with a bright future ahead of her. She was also a cast member on the fuji television and
netflix reality television series Terrace house. On may 18 2020, episode 38 “case of the costume
incident” premiered on television. In this episode Hana was shown to be upset after discovering
that a fellow co host, kobayashi kai, had ruined her 100,000 yen wrestling costume in the
laundry. She then went into a verbal tirade and ended it off my smacking his hat off his head and
storming upstairs. As you can imagine fans were outraged and Hana received not just once but
many death threats and comments telling her to kill herself. However it was later revealed that
the entire scene was staged by the producers of the show and that she felt really terrible about it.
But that didn’t stop the hurtful comments from coming in as replies to her posts as well as in her
direct/ private messages. At 3am 23 may 2020 hana made a final tweet, it reads as follow
“Nearly 100 frank opinions every day. I couldn't deny that I was hurt. I'm dead. Thank you for
giving me a mother. It was a life I wanted to be loved. Thank you to everyone who supported
me. I love it. I'm weak, I'm sorry. I don't want to be a human anymore. It was a life I wanted to
be loved. Thank you everyone, I love you. Bye.” her close friends tried contacting her but sadly
the news of her death was announced at 1pm. Hana was 22.
 Perhaps this could have been avoided if the producers didn’t portray hana in such a bad light or
we should just remember the human behind the screen and not say horrible things about other
people online
On the other hand, social media has proven to be a reservoir of regularly updated information
that can be accessed easily just by simply scrolling on your feed. Social media users can be au
courant with trending news happening worldwide by browsing news pages or merely typing a
few keywords into the search box. Secondly, it enables users to unwind after a stressful day at
work. Watching a profusion of videos on sites like youtube insta, tiktok and staying in touch with
friends via Facebook, zalo are common leisure activities enjoyed by many. Staying away from
social media is losing out on its many benefits and limiting yourself.
To conclude, the basic message I’m trying to get at here is that while there are many outstanding
benefits associated with using social med, abstemious usage should be taken into consideration.