Is Social Media Disconnecting People from Real Life?

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SOCIAL MEDIA
Are people forgetting their real lives because of the virtual life offered by
social media?
‘Social media’ is the term the millennial is most familiar with. It is the most dependable
instrument for communication now-a-days. Not only in the field of communication, social media
has left a deep impact in the fields of education, business, entertainment and so on. This
argumentative essay looks at social media through an analytical prism. This essay throws a little
focus on the benefits of social media, but major parts of this essay highlights the argument how
social media is disconnecting people from their real lives. Hence, the purpose of this study is to
throw lights on different roles played by social media in our lives. The thesis statement of this
essay focuses on the argument that social media is disconnecting people from their real lives.
This main argument is supported by two logical reasons. There is a counterargument which is
again supported by two logical reasons. Finally, there is conclusion section which sums up the
entire content and a provides a concluding statement.
It is true with the advancement of science; social media emerged as a virtual platform of
communication and transcends all the geographical as well as the technical barriers to
communication. The attractive features offered by social media is making the life of the mass
faster, easier and full of fun. Social media has become the ‘virtual best friend’ to people who feel
lonely. It does not only allow people to transcend their boundaries and mix with the world, but
also makes them aware of the current affairs. According to experts, people now-a-days are more
dependent on social media as compared to their own family members, which is interrupting their
real-life communication.

2SOCIAL MEDIA
Argument 1:
Social media is disconnecting people from their real lives:
Logical and clear reasons 1:
According to Hawi et al. (2017), the attractive pots on Facebook, twitter, Instagram
LinkedIn, enhance the engagement of people with different social media platforms. People of
every age, especially teenagers get engrossed in the attractive posts as well as all these amazing
features provided by different social media platform. This deep engagement turns into social
media addiction. Most of the people now-a-days spend maximum amount of time over social
networking sites, YouTube channels. They keep on scrolling down to their profile, watching
YouTube videos even when they are with their family. According to van den Eijnden et al.
(2016), social media are flooded with news or posts which makes teen-ager, social media lovers
excited every moment. Sometimes all of this exciting news are not true, but the illusionary
effects created by social media collapse their power of reasoning and they start believing
whatever social media offers them1. Thus, they become addicted to social media. They are
unable to find out that kind of excitement in real life which they are able to find out in their
virtual life as reality do not offer us fake excitements2. Hence, then start ignoring the reality. This
is the reason they do not interact with their real friends and family. According to Andreassen et
al. (2017), often teen agers are reluctant to understand their emotional attachment with their
1 Hawi, Nazir S., and Maya Samaha. "The relations among social media addiction, self-esteem, and life satisfaction
in university students." Social Science Computer Review 35.5 (2017): 576-586.
2 van den Eijnden, Regina JJM, Jeroen S. Lemmens, and Patti M. Valkenburg. "The social media disorder scale."
Computers in Human Behavior 61 (2016): 478-487.