Tall Girl Takes the World - Social Media is Ruining our Society

Social media changes our lives! Our attitudes and interactions with each other turned cold during the last few years. The media are taking control of our lives very slowly and nobody is noticing! Social Media has been up for about 40 years and it has obviously been advancing from the start. People on it all the time just to look at people’s pictures or watch funny videos of each other. However, things took a slight change from what social media was supposed to be years back. Not for the better either. Social media is ruining our society because of interactions with each other, disorders you could get from being on it all the time, and teachers thinking it is educational, but it really is just harmful.

Initially, Social media is affecting how we interact with each other face to face. An article was written by, Rachel Ehmke, who interviews Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist, She says, “There’s no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating—it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible.” Dr. Steiner-Adair is telling us that social media is cutting off our interactions with each other. If we are always texting, we will never develop a social skill that we might need for a future job or presentation to get you hired for a job. We would turn into people that can not talk to each other without looking at a screen or calling them. Before social media, we had kids going to the mall together and chatting there. They are keeping busy without their phones and socializing. If you are on your phone 24/7 imagine trying to order your food in a restaurant or buying something, difficult right? You would not be able to have a decent conversation with them. Cyberbullying also comes into effect with this too. In an article written by, Rachel Ehmke, she says: “The other big danger that comes from kids communicating more indirectly is that it has gotten easier to be cruel. “Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years contemplate saying to anyone’s face,” says Dr. Donna Wick, a clinical and developmental psychologist.” Dr. Wick explains how cruel we have become from texting mean things to people. Kids are not only texting each other but having virtual fights over something as little as an angle they took in a picture. We should be complimenting others not degrade people for the simplest of reasons. Cyberbullying has something to do with the bully’s self-esteem and all the insecurities about herself/himself, so they put somebody down to make them feel worth it. That is social media's fault. You look at other girls or guys while scrolling and say they are skinnier than you, and you want to be them. That’s when insecurities pop up. In conclusion, we all need to get into a healthy habit of not always looking at our phones or bulling kids for something not important in reality.

Secondly, you could be diagnosed with a long time disorder from being on social media. In the article by, Ronaldo Tumbokon, he says: “A study published in the medical journal JAMA suggests that the more teens check social media and stream video, the more likely they might develop symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, which causes shorter attention span, or distractibility.” Tumbokon is explaining that serious long term disorders that will definitely affect your health in the future could happen from overusing media. Having ADHD or any other disorder can affect grades you might have in school or the jobs you want in the future. Bad sleep schedules come in to play with social media as well. Bright screens from phones, tablets, and even computers can cause you to stay up later than you want to. A major part of your brain growth is sleep, and if you do not get enough sleep how is your brain going to be healthy? As a result, you want to get enough sleep so you grow into a healthy person and not have a disorder because of social media.

Finally, Teachers think social media is a great place to go for extra knowledge, but it causes the belief of false information or incorrect grammar. In the article by, According to the website, it says: “64% of people who use Twitter for news say that they have encountered something they “later discovered wasn't true,”... A study published in the journal Science found that lies spread six times faster than the truth on Twitter, and “fake news” is retweeted more often than true news.” The piece of evidence explains why social media has people that take time out of their day to alter or write an article on something that is totally bogus. Kids go on there to find information for a paragraph they want to write about, but they can not tell what is fake and what is not. Another example of fake news is all over Facebook, Instagram, and many other new sights. Teens and little kids are scrolling on media, and they come across a post that has fake news they might believe it. They proceed to go to their friends and share with them making them believe that post. Incorrect grammar is another example of why media is bad. It is apparently cool to misspell words and not make any sense. That might affect school writing because the student will become familiar with spelling words wrong. As a result, we need to check what sites we are using to get information from and also check spelling because it is a very important skill to have for future matters.

In conclusion, we need to rule over social media. Go to bed earlier, so we get a good night's rest to have an amazing next day. Put down our phones once in a while and talk to a fellow student or friend, and write with correct grammar and check out sites carefully to have better writing skills. We can be so much more positive with social media if we just tried. Let’s make all medias better, so we can benefit from it rather than suffer.