University Essay: The Profound Impact of Social Media on Lives

This essay delves into the multifaceted impacts of social media on individuals, examining both its positive and negative effects. It highlights the detrimental consequences, such as poor mental health, including psychological distress, anxiety, and depression, often linked to excessive social media use. The essay explores the correlation between social media use and sleep quality, body image concerns, and cyberbullying, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy, self-harm, and mental stress. It also addresses the spread of misinformation and its potential to damage reputations and influence consumer behavior. Furthermore, the essay discusses social media's impact on productivity, academic performance, and physical health. Despite acknowledging the benefits of social media, such as enhanced connectivity and educational opportunities, the essay emphasizes the need for governmental initiatives to regulate social media usage and mitigate its adverse effects on individuals' mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The essay cites several academic references to support its claims.

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT ON LIVES
SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT ON LIVES
Name of the student:
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SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT ON LIVES
A large number of negative impacts are associated with the utilization of social media on
the people in the present generation. Researchers are of the opinion that young people are seen to
spend more than two hours per day on different social media like the use of Facebook, twitter,
Instagram and many others. All these result in the development of poor mental health that
includes psychological distress as well as other symptoms like anxiety as well as depression
(Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Many of the studies have also found associations of the use of
social media with that of the sleep quality especially of the young people (Brooks, 2015).
Utilization of the phones, tablets as well as laptops at night before going to bed is linked with
poor quality sleeps and thereby it causes disturbances in sleep patterns. Moreover, body image
also plays one of the most important roles for young people in case of both males as well as
females. It is seen that women are highly concerned about their body image and social media
often becomes the easier platform to portray them. Therefore, in order to gain popularity on the
social media, they can often go to higher extent like starving, different cosmetic surgeries and
many others in order to gain followers and fans and this often result in negative impacts and
threats on their lives (Fardouly et al., 2015). At the same time, cyber bullying is also considered
to be closely associated with the use of the social media. Such bullying behaviors faced by many
victims make them suffer from depression, fear as well as anxiety. These ultimately make them
lead poor quality life and results them from suffering from lack of confidence and self-respect.
Therefore, all these lead to higher levels of mental stress.
Another negative impact is the spreading of the untrue information on the social media
that can impact different individuals as well as organizations in different ways. Often it is seen
that false, misleading as well as confusing information online have the potential to for harming
not only the reputation of different individuals but also about the reputation of the brand. These

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can not only upset family members about the individuals as the image of the victims are affected
but can also even loyal customers (Pfeffer et al., 2014). These can dissuade people from even
considering the purchase of the products as well as other services. Often it is seen that retailer
and smilar other review sites often posts critiques, information as well as reviews that help the
readers to make choices about the products they want to buy, films they want to watch or create a
feeling about any person or objects. However, some of the sites may not post real reviews but the
viewers and the readers may not recognize them. This can affect business or may result in
development of false beliefs and feelings that can affect the viewpoint of every individual.
Unfortunate incident may also occur when well run companies make mistakes or have
employees who are seen to behave inappropriately. Often such stories are seen to go viral where
the real incident might match with what was posted or may not be entirely true. However, this
would affect the overall brand reputation of the individual or the organization (Alwagit, Shahzad
& Alim, 2015). One important negative aspect of the use of social media is that it often results in
circulation of wrong healthcare information that has life threatening issues. Many of the social
media users as well as bloggers post health advices, blogs and experiences that might influence a
reader to try these strategies without consulting any professionals. Therefore, these might expose
them to risks that might also affect their lives. Therefore, social media can harm individuals in
different ways.
Use of social media has now become one of the major addictions in the present
generation and often individuals are seen to remain glued with it. Often they tend to surf the
social media during their work hours in the offices, school, colleges and others (Brooks, 2015).
These not only result in loss of productivity but may also result in occurrence of errors in the
work and may create issues in time management where the work cannot be completed within

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time. Not only for the adults but also for schoolchildren and other student, social media creates a
distraction from their academic life where instead of studying and preparing their homework,
time is spent more on the use of social media. This affects their career as by making them score
low marks and resulting them to be incompetent in gaining effective knowledge and skills. Such
use of social media also prevents them from getting into extracurricular activities or other
exercises that affect their physical health as well (Chua & Chang, 2016).
However, social media use is also associated with positive aspects as well. It is linked
with a better connectivity with friends, relatives and acquaintances regardless of location all over
the world and help in sharing of thoughts and feelings. It also has many benefits for students and
teachers as they can get educated or provide education respectively to any others all over the
world thereby making the nations literate and knowledgeable (Sobaih et al., 2016) . Moreover, it
also acts as a medium for getting help from communities and others. One can also remain
updated about the latest information and updates starting from the medicinal fields to even
technological advancements (Ngai et al., 2015). It also acts as an important domain for
promotion of businesses, shops, services, products and other and can reach to every user within a
glance. It also helps in developing awareness about the new discoveries and innovative staffs that
help in enhancing lives. It has also come of immense help to the business organization in
reaching out to their customers, building reputation and others (Hudson et al., 2015).
From the above discussion, it can be seen that social media impacts positively in many
arenas. However, the positive impacts can never conceal the harms that the social media are
bringing to the health of people especially to the lives of people both mentally, emotionally and
physically. It not only affects sleep pattern affected biological cycle and the physiological
mechanisms of human beings but also has the potential to threaten lives where adolescents may

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self harm or commit suicide due to various factors. Hence, every government should undertake
iniatives to control the usage of social media of the people for preventing loss of lives or
preventing them from leading poor quality lives.
References:

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Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
Alwagait, E., Shahzad, B., & Alim, S. (2015). Impact of social media usage on students
academic performance in Saudi Arabia. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 1092-1097.
Brooks, S. (2015). Does personal social media usage affect efficiency and well-
being?. Computers in Human Behavior, 46, 26-37.
Chua, T. H. H., & Chang, L. (2016). Follow me and like my beautiful selfies: Singapore teenage
girls’ engagement in self-presentation and peer comparison on social media. Computers
in Human Behavior, 55, 190-197.
Fardouly, J., Diedrichs, P. C., Vartanian, L. R., & Halliwell, E. (2015). Social comparisons on
social media: The impact of Facebook on young women's body image concerns and
mood. Body Image, 13, 38-45.
Hudson, S., Roth, M. S., Madden, T. J., & Hudson, R. (2015). The effects of social media on
emotions, brand relationship quality, and word of mouth: An empirical study of music
festival attendees. Tourism Management, 47, 68-76.v
Ngai, E. W., Moon, K. L. K., Lam, S. S., Chin, E. S., & Tao, S. S. (2015). Social media models,
technologies, and applications: an academic review and case study. Industrial
Management & Data Systems, 115(5), 769-802.
Pfeffer, J., Zorbach, T., & Carley, K. M. (2014). Understanding online firestorms: Negative
word-of-mouth dynamics in social media networks. Journal of Marketing
Communications, 20(1-2), 117-128.

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Sobaih, A. E. E., Moustafa, M. A., Ghandforoush, P., & Khan, M. (2016). To use or not to use?
Social media in higher education in developing countries. Computers in Human
Behavior, 58, 296-305.