Social media is hurting us, not helping us

Social media: you can’t live with it, but you essentially can’t live without it.

What does that say about society today?

Social media is great for networking and staying in touch with old friends, but it’s gone beyond this simple structure and taken the social out of being social. We’ve come so far from normal human interaction that we would friend request a person before ever daring to actually say hi to them in public.

Social media is not only bad by stunting our healthy human relationships, but it can actually affect people’s self-esteem.

A picture on a page can get a certain number of “likes,” and that can feel really great, but you’re going to keep looking for that high that Facebook previously gave you. When no one seems to care about your sushi dinner last night, it’s going to hit your self-esteem subconsciously.

We all know in reality that this doesn’t hold any self-worth, but deep down, psychologically, it’s just not good for you.

Another awful side of being a teenager or a 20-something in the generation that thrives on the web is we have an inherent nature towards competition. There is healthy competition in the job-market or on the field during intramural sports, but there is unhealthy competition in battling Instagram views on “Selfie Sunday.”

By sitting and staring at a page of someone’s intentionally portrayed personality, we begin to naturally compare ourselves. This may not be everyone, but it’s most people and just encourages our already shallow society.

Social media has made us lazy. We count on social media to remind us of our friends’ birthdays. Facebook has made it acceptable to write a quick message on someone’s wall, instead of just personally calling your friend to wish them a good day.

I think it hurts our generation much more than it helps. It is nice to be able to stay in contact with old friends, but how many times have you blocked that annoying “activist” on Facebook from your news feed?

Yeah, the one who has continuously provoked argument after argument about how they could easily solve the debt crisis from their desk chairs.

I won’t deny that I use social media, but some sites are worse than others. I want to delete my Facebook, and I hate that I feel the guilt to keep up with it because it’s possible I could actually miss something.

In this day in age, you could actually lose touch with people. Let’s find something better to do with our time, like pick up the phone.