Impact of Social Media: Examining Harms, Benefits and Societal Effects

This essay examines the pervasive influence of social media on modern society, arguing that its harms outweigh its benefits. It delves into issues such as cyberbullying, mental health deterioration, and the erosion of moral values among youths. The essay highlights how excessive social media use can lead to decreased productivity, eyesight problems, and increased crime rates. While acknowledging some advantages like improved communication and marketing opportunities, the essay concludes that the negative impacts of social media on the moral fabric of society and the well-being of young people are significant and cannot be ignored. The author emphasizes the importance of addressing these issues to ensure a successful and morally sound future generation. Desklib offers similar essays and study tools for students.

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Social Media has More Harm than Good
According to the journal on Selective exposure in the age of social media by (Messing,
Solomon, and Sean), interactions between friends and their families across the globe have been
of great concern of humans for centuries. As social animals, human beings have been persistent
in relying on communication to make their relationships strong. Social media is the aggregate
online interchanges channels which are committed to group-based information, association,
content sharing and joint effort. There are various channels that comprise the term social media
in our current society, these include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more. It has been
perceived by many people who use social platforms that it has more benefits than harm, this is
not true. The roots of social platforms can be traced deeper than anyone might think although it
seems that new trends like Facebook are a natural outcome of many centuries in social media
development.
Welcome to the period of semi-isolates couples. In current "fluid" society, relationships
are, similar to cutting edge toys, upgradable. With help of social platforms, love and
relationships have been transformed to a kind of entertainment where youths can easily hook-up,
date and when it’s done they can as well go back to the market to look for more goods. The
conjugal sphere permeation of wife swapping, distract and extramarital adultery juxtaposed with
an atmosphere of suspicion has pushed individuals to a taste of frustration and

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loneliness. Technological revolution and introduction of social media have opened doors to an
avalanche of macabre repercussions(Littleton and Christine 35). Mobile phones now are for
people on the move, they do not keep it out of sight and it becomes a way of staying connected
in a highly mobile society. The ease with which data can be deleted from mobile phones has
increased criminal numbers. Messages can now be ignored something which underscores the
fragility of the contemporary state of human bond. Youths use social platforms to watch dirty
material, morals are now far away from humanity. Sex has been transformed to be a norm.
Pictures sent all over the platforms and they enjoy watching pornographic materials.
In this recent society, social media has been the most disaster any rational man could
render a national disaster(Sunstein 123). Spending an hour every day on social media amounts to
nine weeks every year. This is enough to complete a college course and graduate. On this matter,
some youths spend sixty percent of hours in a day just browsing Facebook, WhatsApp, and other
platforms. To an investor absolutely it is an economic enemy of progress. It reduces the
productivity of the country. Many youths have lost eyesight for spending too much time on
screens, cyberbullying, one of the major causes of why many youths have committed suicide,
have been facilitated by social platforms.
The power of social platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram for spreading
information in the healthcare sector is undeniable. These platforms have not spared the youths,
most of them have lost eyesight as a result of seeing light for long periods of time. The major
concern remains to be how health practitioners have been using the platforms in communication
while at the same time protecting their patients. Now, this is something that is very addictive,
putting in a situation where a doctor is using Facebook when we have a patient who is wailing on
the bed. This has definitely caused more harm and deaths to patients in hospitals. Social media

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has done ill to youths mental health, it makes them get addicted and cannot think on their own,
they have become insecure if they look at their phones. It has triggered more sadness and less
well-being. Many youths who have to continue comparing their lives with others, for instance,
celebrity, ending up desiring more things than they can afford. Social media has facilitated
crimes, conflicts and fights and many youngsters have been injured.
All of these harms, it does not have to mean that social media has no benefit. Obviously,
it helps us get connected across great distances helping us find people we have been within past
years. Social media marketing has just been another strategy companies have used and grown to
be bigger organizations than they were. Communication that has been facilitated by the many
existing social platforms have saved lives in the recent times during crisis where patients have
been rushed to hospitals. Many campaigns have been run on these platforms, for example, the
campaign against HIV/AIDS(Hirshfield, Grov, Parsons, Anderson, & Chiasson, 2015). Medical
practitioners have been trained and interacted, watching video clips on YouTube to improve their
skills. All this are the advantages but which we cannot ignore at the expense of our time, at the
expense of moral values of the societies as far as the coming generation is concerned. The nation
of tomorrow matters a lot to humanity and in order to ensure a successful nation in the future,
there must be a good moral drive towards achieving goals and objectives of any country in the
health sector or even the economy.
In conclusion, social media is a really convenient way of getting in touch with friends and
family. People have used social platforms to develop and share ideas which have improved the
society, for instance, the health sector. People have also sold things and got a way of living,
making their organizations grow through free advertisements. However, all these merits cannot
be quoted to the harm that the social sites have caused. Social platforms have done more harm,

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they have done more evil to our young society than good in terms of morals. In the article
Money, morals, and manners by Lamont (1992), morals play a vital role in the growth and
success of any country.

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Works Cited
Hirshfield, S., Grov, C., Parsons, J. T., Anderson, I., & Chiasson, M. A. (2015). Social
media use and HIV transmission risk behavior among ethnically diverse HIV-positive gay men:
results of an online study in three US states. Archives of sexual behavior, 44(7), 1969-
1978.Lamont, Michèle. Money, morals, and manners: The culture of the French and the
American upper-middle class. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Littleton, Christine A. "Reconstructing Sexual Equality [1987]." Feminist legal theory.
Routledge, 2018. 35-56.
Messing, Solomon, and Sean J. Westwood. "Selective exposure in the age of social
media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting news
online." Communication Research 41.8 (2014): 1042-1063.
Sunstein, Cass R. # Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton
University Press, 2018.