Social Media has made its way consistently and progressively through almost everyone’s lives. Different social media platforms have opened doors to different aspects of a person’s life which would have been impossible 20 years ago. It has widened the scope of connectivity of people miles away from each other. It has been proven useful even in the work world, a lot of candidates now find and apply for jobs via social media.
Digital marketing through social networking sites also makes it easy for different organisation to market and reach out through the masses for less cost. Amidst all of these advancements, there still remains the heavy question in everyone’s mind: Do social media’s benefits overshadow its detrimental effects to our mental health? Are we so caught up with updating our social media feed that we forget how to update who/what we are as humans? And how much is too much social media?
What do you really get with just a click?
It has been proven that using Social Media creates a deep sense of connectivity and strengthens relationships among people, however, it can also provide a feeling of isolation with the outside world as every interaction is made through a digital platform. It can also provide as a mental break from stress, but it may also reduce productivity as it may be a distraction from what you need to accomplish for the day. As much as we want to look at Social Media as an avenue for people to create bonds and access support from one another (which it definitely is!), it has also been used as a way to inflict harm and create feelings of insecurity as it makes way for cyber bullying and promotes false ideals on what a person must look like or be like in order to be accepted. In the past, there is a fine line between having to choose who you consider as personal friends from those who are just acquaintances, and these 2 different groups of people received different information about you. Whilst social media offers these options, 97% of people have not taken up the option to set up different groups, which allows a user to restrict posts to certain groups of people. At present, a lot of people are more interconnected with each other with the use of different platforms and having friends is just a click away. Is it really that easy? You post something personal at Social Media and everyone gets to read it. Everyone gets to be the judge of the personal events; opinions and all the other things being posted online.
Using Social Media offers a lot of options to make life better, complicated, or both. It’s just a matter of how to utilise it properly. Keeping track of your Social Media usage is a good start to gauge how often you indulge yourself with social media apps. You also need to consider that what you see online is not a true representation of a bigger world outside. Given this mentality, this should help in processing out things more logically in terms of creating unrealistic standards or ideals which often stems out of what you see in other people’s social media feeds. You should also be responsible in what you post, because as much as you may want to post anything about everything because it is your account, you should consider the permanence of things you post online and how it may affect or influence some (or most) people. A lot of employers nowadays take some time to check up on social media accounts of their employees and there were (and still are!) a lot of cases where what an employee posts eventually gets them in trouble with their employers. Remember, as you become a part of an organisation, you also become a part of the face of what that organisation stands for. With how simple it is to access other people’s lives with just a click nowadays, it’s also that easy to jeopardise yourself by being irresponsible with what you say or post online.
The world moves in a really fast pace, and it’s a good thing that we’re not in this world to race with one another on who’s the fastest one to catch-up with all the changes. It’s also good to sometimes disconnect and see the bigger world around us. We can know a lot about one another with just a click, but taking a break and spending actual time with friends can also help us look at things with a more realistic perspective.