Impact of Social Media on People's Health

This essay explores the positive and negative impacts of social media on people's health, including mental health issues, physical health problems, and the potential benefits of social media in improving social connections and providing entertainment. It also discusses the need for awareness and corrective measures to address the negative effects of social media on health.

Essay

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Currently environment and lifestyle of people is changing day by day where it is
important for people to be aware and bring the uses of aspects which are important that can help
make the healthy and safe. It has been seen that people are becoming so much busy as they do
not have time to go outside and be in contact with people. In currently people are becoming more
busy who does not have time to spend with others (Berryman, Ferguson and Negy, 2018). The
chosen topic for this report is Social media that will help to understand that how social media has
affected the people's health. In this environment, social media is defined a source of interaction
between people which uses by people to share messages, facilitate sharing of information,
developing career interest and maintaining virtual communities for developing the interactions.
In other words, social media is a computer based technology which uses by people to share their
information and maintaining the good performance. This is important for people to understand
how social media is affecting the health of people in positively and negatively that can help to
take the safety measures and maintain the all activities. The type of social media are social
network, media network, discussion network, and review network which can help to connect the
people whether they are living in any country.
MAIN BODY
Social Media refers to the new-age technology which has helped in connecting the
various people from all over the world (Chugh and Ruhi, 2018). It takes various forms under
which it is available to people from all over the world in many countries. It is available to many
people around the world and they can make its use to reduce the distance between them thereby
reducing the boundaries. The use of different types of social media websites is being made
nowadays so that the different people can express their views freely and can connect with each
other beyond the existence of physical boundaries. There are different social media websites
which are being used nowadays by the people all over the world. These are explained as follows-
Facebook- Facebook is a social media website which lets users interact with each other. It
is a popular social media platform which has various features (Enikolopov, Makarin and
Petrova, 2020). The users can add friends by sending friend requests to each other, they can chat
with each other and can share pictures and data with each other.

Instagram- Instagram is a social media app which lets the users share pictures with each
other (Guesalaga, 2016). The users therefore can also follow each other, send direct messages to
each other. In this way this app lets the users from all over the world to be able to connect
effectively with each other in the right manner.
Twitter- Twitter is a social media platform in which the users can use features like
Posting Tweets, Sending Direct Messages etc. It is popular platform which is used by celebrities
also. It lets users express their views and connect with people all over the world. It can be useful
for people as well as organizations to acquire a global image which can be used positively.
YouTube- YouTube is a platform where there is an availability of videos of different
genres (Pittman and Reich, 2016). It is used by people as well as organizations from all over the
world. It offers them option to target a mass range of audience highly effectively and efficiently.
LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a social media website which has job advertisements from
recruiters. People can search for jobs here and the organizations can post for their job vacancies.
Thus in this way it offers mutual benefit for both of them.
These are the social media platforms which offer both users and organizations to target a
large base of audience. Thus in this way it can be quite helpful in ensuring that both of them are
able to use it in the right manner so that it can be helpful for them. Different users can make the
use of social media in their own manner.
Social Media can create an influence on the people in a number of ways. One way in
which it can impact the people is Health. Social Media affects the health of people. It can impact
the health of people in the following manner-
Social Media is leading towards an impact on the health of people by putting them into
depression. This is so because some people are depressed if they do not get sufficient attention
on Social Media. Thus in this way it affects the mental health of people. Thus in this way it is
harmful for the health of people.
With excessive use of Social Media anxiety among different people also increases. This
can be due to the amount of attention which they are getting on Social Media. If they do not get
sufficient attention then this leads then they feel bad about it which in turn affects their health.
Thus in this way it affects the mental health of people. An increase in anxiety can lead to
different types of diseases and thus in this way can create an impact on people.
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Use of Social Media is also leading towards loneliness in many people. They feel that
they are lonely and their real friends are the ones who they have made on the social media.
Therefore in this way this can create an impact on the people and their health.
Using Social Media also affects Physical Health of the employees. Increased Eye Strain,
Lack of Sleep are the symptoms of the people whose Physical Health has been impacted due to
the impact created by Social Media Websites. Therefore in this way it creates an influence on
their health.
Influence of Social Media on health is a subject which has attracted widespread debate.
Doctors all over the world are identifying the way it affects people and also finding out solutions
for impact on health which it creates. The solutions which have been identified by them are as
follows-
Counselling- When the people are provided counselling it makes sure that they come out
of depression because of social media. There are different counselling centres under which
counsellors tell people frequently about the impact which social media creates on the mental
health and causes depression. Therefore this helps people to be more open about their problem
which helps in solving them.
Awareness Campaigns- By running Awareness Campaigns the people are being told
about the negative impact which can be created by Social Media on health. Thus in this way the
level of awareness among the people regarding health can be raised which can help them a lot in
coming out of mental problems which they are facing.
Adequate Treatment- Adequate Treatment has to be provided to the people who are
facing Physical Health Issues as a result of using Social Media excessively. In this way they can
be provided with adequate support.
Thus in this way it can be said that the use of Social Media not only affects mental health
of people but also impacts the physical health. Thus there is a requirement for taking different
types of corrective measures so that the people can deal with their issues and can solve them.
Also the Governments of different countries have to raise the awareness about the impact which
the Social Media creates on health of people.
Social media can be explained as a platform which uses by people to share their messages
and information in the changing environment that has wider impacts on people's health. There
are many negative impacts of social media on the mindset of different individuals and all of these
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are explained in description. Social media impacted the subconscious minds of various people
and can force the individual to purchase a particular product or service by regular and persistent
approach and thus resulting in the consumer purchasing that product. It is very harmful as people
end up purchasing things that they really don't need (Giunchiglia and et.al., 2018). Also it can
create a high competition among individuals as all can not afford the living that is shown by
social media sites but still a person tries to copy that and thus resulting in creating a debt trap
around the person which can be very harmful for the society. This create the problem in new
generation as they are not understanding what they are doing and how they are wasting their time
as it cause the mental pressure, depression, anxiety, losing sleep, and others that might be
affected the health of people. Spending too much time on social on social networking sites has
affected the mood of human being that shows symptoms of anxiety and depression. The another
impact is Cyber bulling which are facing the problem by hackers face to face. AS in environment
many hackers are happening who does misconduct with people's personal profile and affected
their life by doing misappropriation. Wrongdoer of bullying can use the namelessness that social
networks provide to gain people's trust and then terrorize them in front of their peers. For
instance, they might create a fake profile and act friendly to a classmate, then later betray and
embarrass them online. Most social media sites have a serve lack of online authenticity that make
people so much busy and far from the people. By using the social media people are wasting their
time, children are not spending their time with family, uses snap chat to share exciting
adventures which distracts their mind and affected their life (Richards and Tunçer, 2018).
Social Media is majorly impacted on social lives who are residing in society and creating
problem for people's mind as they are not working properly. For example, currently Pandemic
has occurred in whole of world which highly made the people addicted regarding social media
and social activities as they are wasting their time and money in internet or playing many games.
The mind set of people has indirectly affected as people order foods, make the buying decision
regarding particular products and services. By using the social media people are playing games
or accomplishing task so they choose the social media as a best source of doing right things. It
has been seen that many people are committing suicide as data shows suicide rates between 10-
14 years old, which have grown more than 50 percent since last three years. Many people are
using social media as a platform of war as they have uploaded some dangerous video, images,
wrong information and other activities which might be a reason of war. This create a feeling of
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conflicts between people who are residing in society and causes the mental pressure. Many
people are facing the problems of weak eyesights and colour blind because of using social media
and sites continuously which affected the life and people at other place (Kizgin, Jamal, Dey and
Rana, 2018).
Even when social media has so many kinds of negative impacts upon the health of an
individual, it is also noticed that the different platforms of social media also have certain positive
impacts on the health status of a person. In this relation, it has been analysed that social media
allows the personnel to share their views and opinions in front of other persons, thus being able
to share their emotions and feelings with other beings. This helps them in getting over the feeling
of loneliness and socialising them with a large number of individuals so that they do not feel sad
at any point of time. In addition to this, it has also been determined that gaining accessing to
several kinds of social media platforms tend to elevate the need to visit any location or person
physically for the purpose of fun or entertainment. Social media has become the biggest source
of entertainment in the current time allowing the individuals to access Youtube or Twitter or
Instagram and deriving fun from the content posted thereon. Apart from this, it can be pointed
out that social media also has the potential to bridge the gap of geographical distance by
connecting people by virtue of computer mediated technologies. All of these are accounted as the
benefits that are derived as a result of leveraging the different platforms of social media. All of
these benefits or advantages of social media tend to have a positive impact on the health status of
an individual in the long term. This happens because the individual feels relieved and a part of
the society at large while accessing the different platforms, reading some content and sharing
some other. This keeps the person happy and allows them to get over any kind of negative
feeling that they might be undergoing with the passage of time. In addition to this, it has been
analysed that social media also provides knowledge to the public about how to keep their health
alright by providing content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter,
YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, and so forth.
CONCLUSION
From the report it can be concluded that social media is a type of technology which uses
to share the messages and information by connecting with people and maintain good activities.
This is the platform which is designed to snare the attention of people, keeping them online and
delivering the messages. This is not only boon for people and many businesses as it is curse also
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which has affected the people's health. This create the pressure and emphasized them to reduce
the thinking capacity of people. Social media has affected the people's health negatively as it
maintain inadequacy about life and appearance, fear of missing out, depression and anxiety,
cyber bullying and self absorption which create the unsafely for people's lives.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Chugh, R. and Ruhi, U., 2018. Social media in higher education: A literature review of
Facebook.Education and Information Technologies.23(2). pp.605-616.
Enikolopov, R., Makarin, A. and Petrova, M., 2020. Social media and protest participation:
Evidence from Russia. Econometrica. 88(4). pp.1479-1514.
Guesalaga, R., 2016. The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational antecedents,
and the role of customer engagement in social media. Industrial Marketing
Management.54.pp.71-79.
Pittman, M. and Reich, B., 2016. Social media and loneliness: Why an Instagram picture may be
worth more than a thousand Twitter words.Computers in Human Behavior.62.pp.155-
167.
Berryman, C., Ferguson, C. J. and Negy, C., 2018. Social media use and mental health among
young adults. Psychiatric quarterly. 89(2). pp.307-314.
Giunchiglia, F., and et.al., 2018. Mobile social media usage and academic
performance. Computers in Human Behavior. 82. pp.177-185.
Richards, D. R. and Tunçer, B., 2018. Using image recognition to automate assessment of
cultural ecosystem services from social media photographs. Ecosystem services. 31.
pp.318-325.
Kizgin, H., Jamal, A., Dey, B. L. and Rana, N. P., 2018. The impact of social media on
consumers’ acculturation and purchase intentions. Information Systems Frontiers. 20(3).
pp.503-514.
Etter, M., Ravasi, D. and Colleoni, E., 2019. Social media and the formation of organizational
reputation. Academy of Management Review. 44(1). pp.28-52.
Luna, S. and Pennock, M. J., 2018. Social media applications and emergency management: A
literature review and research agenda. International journal of disaster risk reduction.
28. pp.565-577.
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