Opinion Story

You walk into a room full of teenagers, and it is guaranteed that at least half the room will be on their electronic device, isolated from the people around them. 

Social networks are meant to help people communicate easier, but is it drawing us further from reality? Our smart phones and computers are an excuse to not communicate with our surroundings because we claim we are preoccupied with them, and they serve a greater importance to us than actual people.

Out of the seven billion people in the world, three billion are active internet users, and two billion are active social media users.

 I do agree that there are many upsides to social media, you are able to connect with people living a long distance from you, or just be able to have a conversation with a friend. I myself use social media and it can be very fun.

But where the problem occurs is when people abuse the use of social media, or even become addicted to it. Not only does it create a distracting environment, not being able to focus on school work or other necessary work, but it also distracts you from the real world.

 I’ve witnessed this many times before, where you will be talking to a person, but their focus is directed to their phone and they don’t have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.

Social media is also creating a new definition for love and relationships. 

It has given more opportunities for couples to meet and chat before real life interactions, but in my opinion it ruins the spark of when you first meet a person in real life. It also creates an awkward strain between the two people, talking online but never actually in person.

Social media has taken away our need to communicate with the people around us, because we feel as we are already doing that. It has given us an excuse to be antisocial and I think that is a real problem for the future.

Although it is obvious that we humans will continue to interact in person, I think the number will increasingly lower. That genuinely scares me because I think the way you interact with people plays such a big role in the quality of your life and happiness.

Of course there is a way to prevent this situation, but you need to have people willing to give up such constant social media use, which I don’t think a lot of people can, based on their dependency to social media. And I don’t mean completely give up social media, because I think it’s necessary to communicate with your friends and family, but to limit such excess use, the time that you use just scrolling through your feed over and over, or sending pointless pictures to your friends on snapchat.

If we were only to focus solely on the necessary communication, and then go on with our daily lives I think everyone would get a better use out of their time.

Social media has brought many advantages to our world, but has brought such a big disadvantage, degrading our social skills, that something needs to be done about it.