Is social media good for your health?
Highlighting the adverse effects that people encounter because of social media and how to tackle those problems to live a healthy life.
I am sure most of the people reading this would have a social media presence, but what is the actual purpose that social media fulfils?
It is to connect people with others. And with the help of the internet, these platforms can connect people all over the world.
Currently, we are all going through a very challenging time, but with the help of the internet and social media, we are connected with our friends and family. And connecting people with one another has countless benefits in itself such as raising voices of the people who are facing unjust measures like the Black people in the United States. Awareness created by people on social media led to the Black Lives Matter Movement which became one of the largest movements in the history of the United States, and there are many other cases where social media platforms had played a great role in raising the voices of the people suffering unjust measures.
Social media was a force of good, but it has changed.
Everything is monitored on the social media platforms, the data which they collect is used to create a virtual model of the user, which is used by the algorithms to predict our behaviour. And according to our behaviour, the algorithms pick up the ads which would entice the user to buy a product or service and this process makes revenue for the company in return for our engagement. Their business model requires its users to spend as much time on the platform as possible, which leads to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
We as users act like lab rats for them.
Another problem caused by social media is fake news. Traditionally we got our news from trusted sources, journalists and media outlets that are required to follow a strict code of practice, but that is not the case with social media as there is very little regulation on publishing posts on social media. People are allowed to share whatever they want to on these platforms, and you might be thinking that such a thing should be appreciated, but there is a problem with it too. It has been found that fake news on Twitter spreads six times faster than real news. This means that most people are viewing fake news on social media. Fake news from social media creates polarization in our society because of which people don’t actually give any value to other people’s opinions.
Social media is also used by big corporations to spread manipulative narratives. The Facebook — Cambridge Analytica scandal started in 2013, in which Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, had acquired personal data of nearly 87 million Facebook users from an external researcher, which was used to manipulate more than 200 elections all around the world.
I would like to sum up my statement by saying that we are a part of the first generation where we have these magical powers, but no one knows about the long term impact it could have on our mental and physical health. No one knows how long our data would be there on the internet. Keeping these questions in mind it would be better to keep a check on your online presence and don’t let it be the main medium of communication, as communication on social media can never be as good as face to face communication.
