Jackelyn Rosas

English 103

August 8, 2021

When it comes to social media it has become a huge part of people’s daily lives. Now we

aren’t able to leave the house without our phones, and when we do we feel like a bit of us is

missing. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, are opened by people on a

daily basis. They are being used negatively and positively in humans daily lives. Yet social

media has impacted us both in different ways and at different times.. Social media has made us

connect and disconnect with people around us, it has made us portray a persona that we aren’t

but then again social media can help promote certain things. Social media has made us see

certain situations that we weren't really able to before at a fast pace.

Social media has made people want more than others and become known just like

William Deresiewicz said 'the goal now, it seems to become known ,to turn oneself into a sort of

miniature celebrity.' When it comes to this, social media has impacted humanity negatively

because everyone is trying to compete with one another. Everyone wants to be better than one

another. Turning themselves to envy people who have more than them just because they are able

to reach that celebrity status. Once they have reached “miniature fame” they become different

and feel like everyone is worth less than them. And for the people who aren’t able to reach that

certain stage they become angry and unhappy towards themselves because they aren’t able to be

like the person in social media. It becomes something so crucial for the person to reach that

certain “fame.'' He also makes a point about how we aren’t able to do things on our own without

having someone beside us. For example he says “ technology is taking away our privacy, and our
concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone. We get accustomed to having

someone next to us every step of the way and once we don’t we turn into panic mode and don’t

know what to do. With technology in our daily lives almost every minute of every hour we

become weary without technology. Just imagine waiting at a bus stop, while waiting what is the

first thing we do? Go on our phone while we wait because when we just wait without being on

our phone we feel weird, we feel like everyone is staring at us. Having our phone with us and

talking to people though there makes us feel that we aren’t alone waiting at the bus stop it makes

us feel secure.

As social media continues to evolve people this can have a bad side to it. It can affect us

mentally. For example, in Christian V. Baccarella's article states that “cyber bullying may be a

way to intentionally harm individuals, while over-sharing photos of positive experiences.' Which

means when you reach a certain platform in social media people around you envy you no matter

if you are being positive or negative they will always come up with something negative to say

about you. And sometimes we reach a point where we can take all the negative and makes us

become suicidal sometimes. It can affect different human beings a certain way depending on how

thin their skin is to hate comments. He then mentions “social media help to establish and reveal

relationships, they enable different types of social engagement and related deleterious

consequences' ' . Seeing this means people on social media can pursue a different persona than

what they truly are. This makes us people on social media feel that our lives aren’t as great as

theirs, it makes us feel less than them. Seeing influencers on social media live up to this persona

makes us feel that their Lives are better than ours, that they don’t have problems to worry about.

As we continue to see how much social media can affect a person who’s doing it and the

person who is using it in different ways. In C.Blair Burnette says “social media appear to
contribute to body dissatisfaction in adolescents” This can have a very negative impact on people

who use social media. Humans that are seeing a nice body on social media makes them think

they have that certain body in order to attain attention from others. In girls it makes us feel that

our body’s aren’t good enough for men, makes us think men or anybody won’t like us because

we don’t have that social media body. She continues to explain that”...negative psychological

outcomes such as depressed mood and low self-esteem.” Relating it to the beginning social

media can have a negative impact on humanity because it makes us believe we need to look a

certain way in order to fit society. If we don’t have that it will bring our self-esteem down and

make us unhappy with ourselves.

As I continue to see how much of an negative impact there is to humans with the use of

technology. In Sherry Turkle's book she mentions “we really didn’t need to keep computers busy.

They keep us busy.” This becomes so true because we sometimes don’t even see how much time

we spend on social media. If we are with family we have to at least open a social media platform.

We can never really just be focused on family time. Or then again if we were doing certain

activities in our daily lives we always have to use social media. Another thing he mentions is

“we like that the web knows us.” This means when an advertisement comes up and sees that we

can relate to it, we become happy but in all reality it's a negative impact because it means that the

internet has access to personal information about us.

While others may think social media can have a negative impact on humanity, and

believe that social media is just creating chaos within people, William Deresiewicz said in his

article “The end of Solitude” “it has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another

and marginalized people to find one another. With social media most of us have been able to

reach family members that we weren't able to reach before. It has connected some of us to our
childhood friends even. Social media has been a great way to get in touch with people that we

don’t have numbers for. With just a simple first and last name on social media we’re able to find

that person. He then mentions “the gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak” This makes

people feel that we’re not alone in the world that there are people out there that we are able to

relate to. We can come across people that have similar issues like us and we can talk about it

with them and feel comfortable. Knowing that there’s people outside that have situations like us

makes us feel at ease within ourselves.

When it comes to social media, we are able to make everyone find out about up to day

news. With social media news is able to transfer much faster because it just takes a video or

picture and press post and it will go viral. We also are able to see the real live things that are

happening with evidence not just words. For example in Christian V. Baccarella article says

“engagement between firms and consumers is being democratized” This means that company’s

are able to easily promote a new product and billions of people are able to see it. This benefits

companies by saving them money on billboards, magazines, etc with just a simple picture and

posting it on social media they are able to promote. This makes social media a great source for

humans. He then brings up a statement that says “many of these advantages have materialized,

this leading almost 50% of all EU firms to use at least one form of social media in 2017” This

means if in 2017 half of the people were using social media to promote their business, now in

2021 it must have grown to its full capacity for companies promotion.

On the other hand Social media is a great source for finding out the latest news. For

example in the Tomer Simon article “people are natural information seekers, relying primarily on

their own social networks” This translates to social media being a big part of news. In today's

society since we are on our phone 24/7 the way we get to be informed right away is through
social media. Also because through social media we are able to see what is happening around the

world not just around us. We are able to see injustice in other countries and what people from

there really go through. Because without social media sometimes the news can portrait a scenario

that is much worse than it is or portrait it like it's not as bad at it seems. Another thing he

mentions is “people seek information for themselves, to learn about the emergency event, locate

their family and friends.” For example not so long ago we saw the family of Vanessa Guillen a

girl from Texas rely on social media to find her daughter who used to work at a military base and

went missing. Once her family went to social media, police went on the move to find her because

of the peer pressure that social media made. Vanessa's mother even went to the White House to

talk to the president about the situation. Overall you can see the positive effect that social media

brings to families. Social media has become a positive and great source for not only receiving

news but putting news out there.

Social media has been a great impact to humanity, it has been a great tool to humanity as

well. While I was reading an article by Zhang Liwen he said “Mini organizational

representatives review social media information when recording and assessing job applicants”

this means that now with the You will lose your social media we are able to find jobs online

faster, we are able to apply and get jobs quicker than before. With technology helping you get a

job becomes important not only for the employer but also for the employee. Not so long ago I

myself used social media to find a job. While using the app, you are able to apply to jobs as well

as jobs can see you and send you a message to see if you’re interested in working with them

sometimes. With technology they were able to build an app called indeed where people who are

seeking for jobs can find a job faster. And for the company who are looking for employees

they’re able to promote their job offer online knowing that it can’t make its point across faster.
Another thing he mentions was' ' as well as other personal information not related to work“

Technology, and social media you’re able to find your companion online. You’re able to create a

a relationship with other people online. Having social media can be used in so many ways like

finding a job, finding friends to talk to, finding a partner, finding different things to do, finding

different places to go to, getting informed by what’s going on in the world today just an overall

positive impact on humans.

After all, technology has made a great impact into people’s daily lives. No matter how

Negatively the Internet can affect humans, it has been a great source overall. Later technology

might affect human relationships because we won’t be able to have a decent conversation one on

one in person with someone, we will get so used to just typing in a question and getting an

answer. Technology is definitely bringing people together online but it’s also pushing people

away to meet in person. When it comes to technology putting stress on US residents I believe

you can put a lot of stress into people who use social media. If you’re not part of social media it

might not really put so much stress. Technology has affected global politics by letting all kinds of

people voice their opinions online. It has also affected it in a positive way for politics and

economics because we are now able to learn more about certain situations going on in politics.

When it comes to technology in the race, class, and gender there’s not really inequalities I

believe because we find ourselves having similar situations with people on social media. But

then again people who don’t have access to this new technology like elderly might have a

different conception about race, class and gender. Technology now has increased the amount of

privacy we have over our personal information because everything personal that we keep on our

phones, like emails, bank statements, etc. the Government has access to it because sometimes we

get related stuff that we’ve been searching on our Instagram, Facebook, Twitter page to pop up.
 Refrences

Baccarella , Christian. “ELAC Libraries Proxy Login.” ELAC Libraries EZproxy Login, Aug.

2018, www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.elac.edu/science/article/pii/S0263237318300781.

Burnette, Blair. “ELAC Libraries Proxy Login.” ELAC Libraries EZproxy Login, Dec. 2017,

www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.elac.edu/science/article/pii/S174014451730102X.

Deresiewicz , William. “The End of Solitude by William Deresiewicz - Articles - House of

Solitude.” Hermitary, 2009, www.hermitary.com/solitude/deresiewicz.html.

“ELAC Libraries Proxy Login.” ELAC Libraries EZproxy Login, Dec. 2020,

openurl-ebsco-com.libproxy.elac.edu/openurl?sid=pdh&volume=105&date=2020-12&

amp;spage=1530&issn=0021-9010&stitle=&genre=article&issue=12&t

itle=Journal%2Bof%2Bapplied%2Bpsychology.&epage=1546.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together . hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs047n/readings/Alone_Together.pdf.