THE CONTROL OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON HUMANS

Today, social media has created new styles of communication for us, which made huge impact on everyday lives of the people. Social media has brought people with common interests together and expanded the horizon of ideas worldwide. However, there has also been a profound impact of social media on human behavior and society.

Human behavior changes more when we dabble with technology especially with social media. The daily use of social media by people has increased so much that it is slowly injecting an inflection into our behavior.

Algorithms tend to evaluate our virtual personality based on where we go, what we are interested in, what we buy. This data forms our digital footprint, which we leave behind all over the internet. IT giants use our footprint to keep our attention and increase the time spent on their services and applications, where they bombard us with targeted ads and any other information they need.

HOW GOOGLE???

Google came around and made sure that ads were strategically targeted at people whenever they searched a particular thing in the Google search box instead of carpet bombing them with advertisements that meant very little. They also began placing ads just when a person was about to buy something. For the first time, advertisers saw a direct link between showing people ads and the purchases that came about as a result of them.

 

THE GOOD IMPACT  OF SOCIAL MEDIA:

·         Social media can add creativity to our thinking as people can share their views and work with others.

·         It allows people to explore and become actively involved without the fear of rejection.

·         While no one advocates spending hours after hours gaming, social media games can build social connections, improve a person’s self-efficacy, boost their cognitive flexibility and self-control. They can teach students how to deal with successes and failures in real life.

·         Social media connectivity with families, friends and some government safety organizations, has resulted in people feeling safe while moving out.

·         LinkedIn is one of the greatest example of how networking over social media has helped people in finding the jobs in domain of their interests.

 

THE BAD IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA: 

 

·         Face-to-face interactions which are necessary for development of personalities, learning social skills and communication skills, have been removed from the lives of people, especially younger generations. Children are having a difficult time interacting with others, which might lead to unsociable behaviour.

·         Comparison with other lives has been made easy by social media. People become unhappy with their current circumstances, leading to problems with self-esteem and depression.

·         Social media use has also been associated with cyber bullying and cyber abuse by anonymous users online, which leads to problems of self-esteem, privacy ,etc.

·         Most studies have shown that, social media’s violent games result in increase in violent tendencies and behaviours in children.

·         Social media has also been used as tool to spread negativity and rumors online which has lead to increase in the instances of violence in the society. For instance - Recently, the rumours of kidnappers over WhatsApp have led to deaths of innocent people in various parts of India.

·         With social media it has become nearly impossible to avoid bad news and the negative influences on our lives. This can lead to long-lasting psychological repercussions and ultimately lead to thoughts of our world falling apart, stress and anxiety.