There is no denying that the invention of social media has served as a great advantage to many people and businesses, especially now that social media is in the palm of our hands with the use of phone apps. Social media helps us connect with people all over the world and find other people with similar interests to ours that we otherwise would not have met.
However, there are also disadvantages to the increase in social media use. These disadvantages can affect every aspect of your life – your work as well as your personal relationships.
First of all, social media can cause problems with matters such as controversial subjects, as it serves as a form of virtual telephone – with each share, some misinformation creeps in, and eventually it’s hard to distinguish truth from fact.
Social media can bring new complications to the work place for a of reasons. For one, it can serve as a distraction when you should be doing work at your computer.
It can also make inter-office relations tense; for example, if you ignore a friend request from a coworker it could give them hard feelings, or if you are too secretive then your coworkers may wonder if you are hiding anything.
It is also significantly harder to leave your personal life at home when your employer can see things on your profile. This could lead to losing your job or being treated differently, whether the things on your profile are things that affect the quality of your work or not.
Social media can also negatively affect relationships. For one thing, we have seemed to have gotten to a point where people communicate more over text messaging and messenger systems than they do face to face, and this could make the quality of a conversation suffer.
It may also cause problems when you are supposed to be spending time with someone else, if you are constantly checking your phone for notifications while you are out.
Other problems that can hurt a relationship due to social media involve questions of privacy between a couples. A recent survey revealed that 17 percent of married couples admitted to fighting on a daily basis over something related to social media activity. The same survey found that 58 percent of respondents knew their spouse’s password, whether the spouse was aware or not.
This could lead to a lack of trust, such as seeing something strange on your spouse’s social media and logging into their accounts to take a look “just in case.”
A final way that social media has a negative impact is someone’s self-esteem. These days, it’s like the only way to properly celebrate a big announcement is to make sure it hits social media as well. Since we tend to use social media to make our lives look picture perfect.
This could be damaging to people going through a rough time, as they get the impression that others around them are much happier. Cyber bullying is also easier on social media, as people are more likely to do and say mean things from behind a computer instead of face to face.
The solution to these problems is to limit the use of social media time. This isn’t to say do away with it completely, but sometimes you can avoid sharing your private moments on social media, and make sure you set time aside to spend with other people away from social media.
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