Danger of Social Media

The essay discusses the negative implications of the continuously expanding usage of social media in almost every domain of human life in the contemporary period. It takes into account the issues of privacy and security of the users, effects on the mind and psychology of the users, and indirect impacts on physical and mental health.

Running head: DANGER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Danger of Social Media
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Notes

1DANGER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media: Problems and Danger
Over the years, the world has progressed significantly in terms of communication and
networking as with time technologies have helped immensely in decreasing the barriers of
distance and time among the different countries. There are, however, several crucial issues of
concern and danger in the usage of social media.
The invention of internet and its widespread usage across the globe has facilitated
profusely in making the communication channels even easier and efficient. This can be seen
from the popularity of what is known as the “Social Media” in the contemporary global
framework. The term “Social Media”, in the essence of the term itself refers to the websites and
the online applications, which can be availed with the help of internet and which provides its
users the facility to communicate with the every corner of the world1. It helps the users to create
and share their creations with whomever they want and also to convey their thoughts and
feelings to the world. With time the usage of this social media platform has increased
significantly due to its immense popularity, which can be attributed to the advantages it creates
in terms of both personal and professional contact establishment across the world. Websites like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have gained significant attention from all the age groups and
socio-economic strata of the world2. The youth, especially, are the most frequent users of these
websites, which attract them with their global exposure and limitless exploring opportunities.
However, not all aspects of this social media and its usage are positive as with great exposure,
the same also increases the scope of malpractices and infiltration of the negative attributes too, to
which the users often fall vulnerable, the situation being even more acute in case of children and
1 Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press, 2012.
2 Couldry, Nick. Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Polity, 2012.

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adolescent population. The essay takes into account these negative implications of the
continuously expanding usage of social media in almost every domain of human life in the
contemporary period3.
The social media, as discussed above, has gradually entered in the everyday life of people
and has become one of the necessities of life for a major population due to its exposure to the
happenings all over the world and facility of easy communication. However, this ease and
unrestrained global exposure many a times leads to adverse effects, having negative implications
on the life of the users. One of such primary issues of concern is the issue of privacy and security
of the users. In the contemporary periods, with the huge global exposure to the worldwide people
and phenomena, the users of the social networking sites enjoy immense freedom of expressing
their thoughts, interests and establishing communication4. Often this leads to sharing of personal
details of the users on these social media platforms. This is a matter of huge concern as it
becomes immensely convenient for the hackers and internet frauds to exploit these personal
details, thereby harming the users in concern. Apart from frauds and scams, there also lies the
risk of infiltration of viruses and malwares which often causes widespread trouble in terms of
breach of security and compromising of the security of the huge numbers of users. Financial
frauds and scams have been increasing in numbers as well as in magnitude with every passing
day due to this easy of infiltrating social media and networking platforms by the hackers from all
over the world5.
3 Boyd, Danah. It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press, 2014.
4 Oboler, Andre, Kristopher Welsh, and Lito Cruz. "The danger of big data: Social media as computational social
science." First Monday 17.7 (2012).
5 Fuchs, Christian. Social media: A critical introduction. Sage, 2017.

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Apart from these macro-scaled problems of social security of the people using these
social media platforms, another bothering issue of the expansion of social media usage is are the
effects, which it is having on the mind and psychology of the users, especially the teenagers and
the children, who by nature are highly vulnerable to its implications. One of the primary
problems of social networking sites is that they are highly uncensored. This implies that the users
of these platforms are exposed to both positive as well as negative contents of these social media
from all the corners of the world6. Though in some platforms there remains warning against
unrestricted usage by the children, however, these restriction are often not obeyed by the
teenagers and underage population. With increasing availabilities of smart phones and lesser
parental control, the children get wide exposures to the wide world. This has some positive
implications too as penetration of knowledge and information becomes easy and helps them to
explore and know about productive and useful things, thereby increasing their domain of
knowledge. However, often the more than required exposure creates trouble for them in the sense
that they get exposed to contents which are not suitable for them7. This includes adult contents,
violence, unethical contents and brainwashing materials, which affect both their psychological
and mental development adversely. Those who want to take advantage of the same, in order to
fulfilling their unfair desires, hugely exploit the vulnerability of these young age population.
“Cyber Crime”, from just being a term, has become a global problem with its magnitude, domain
of expansion and complexities increasing profusely and has created huge turmoil in the global
scenario. Apart from the above-discussed impacts, there are also several indirect impacts,
including lack of healthy lifestyle, obesity, pain in neck and joints and addiction to computers
6 Porter, Kathryn, et al. "A study of the effects of social media use and addiction on relationship satisfaction." Meta-
communicate2.1 (2012).
7 Salehan, Mohammad, and Arash Negahban. "Social networking on smartphones: When mobile phones become
addictive." Computers in Human Behavior 29.6 (2013): 2632-2639.

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and internet, which also adversely affects the physical as well as mental health of the population,
especially the young population who are increasingly making it a crucial part of their daily life8.
From the above discussion, it can be asserted that the increasing expansion of usage of social
media and networking in the recent periods have created a completely new experience for the
people. However, the positive aspects of such social media networking and global
communication have been shadowed to a considerable extent by the continually cropping up
negative implications, which are seen to have been affecting the users as well as those connected
to them adversely. This indicates towards the need for controlled and judicious usage of this
immensely powerful tool for communication in the global framework.
8 Halder, Debarati, Karuppannan Jaishankar, and K. Jaishankar. Cyber crime and the victimization of women: laws,
rights and regulations. Information Science Reference, 2012.

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References
Boyd, Danah. It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press, 2014.
Couldry, Nick. Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Polity, 2012.
Fuchs, Christian. Social media: A critical introduction. Sage, 2017.
Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press,
2012.
Halder, Debarati, Karuppannan Jaishankar, and K. Jaishankar. Cyber crime and the victimization
of women: laws, rights and regulations. Information Science Reference, 2012.
Oboler, Andre, Kristopher Welsh, and Lito Cruz. "The danger of big data: Social media as
computational social science." First Monday 17.7 (2012).
Porter, Kathryn, et al. "A study of the effects of social media use and addiction on relationship
satisfaction." Meta-communicate2.1 (2012).
Salehan, Mohammad, and Arash Negahban. "Social networking on smartphones: When mobile
phones become addictive." Computers in Human Behavior 29.6 (2013): 2632-2639.