Impact of Social Media on the Lives of Young Adults

 INTRODUCTION

“Social Media” is a widely used term in the modern society nowadays. But it has a very short history. What makes social media so special is the fact that it has become very prominent in a very short period of time. If you are wondering ‘What is Social Media?’ it is explained in the latter chapters.

Social Media which is a popular concept in the society affects the society itself in multiple ways. Some of them are good while some being bad. The younger generation is the part of the society that is heavily involved with social media. So it is not a surprise that they are the ones that are affected most by the impacts of Social Media. Young adults are a part of this younger generation. Young adults can be defined as people between the ages of 18 to 25. This is the age where they try to explore & experiment. So the knowledge about Social Media & its impacts are very important.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

According to Wikipedia,

             “Social Media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.” ^{[1] [2]}

As a brief introduction, it can be stated that, the social media is a computer based technology which is associated with websites, web based software or web applications and computer programs. It facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts and information and the communication of content. The contents include personal information, documents, photos and videos. The users engage with social media through computer, tablet or smart phone. ^[3]

The history of social media runs back to 550 B.C. when the people started to communicate by exchanging letters through postal service. This stage of communication changed up to a point when the telegraph was invented in 1792. The two most important discoveries happened in the last decade of 1800s: the telephone in 1890 and the radio in 1891. The rapid change in technology that happened in the 20th century, the invention of the super computer in 1940’s led the scientists and engineers to pave the path to the birth of the internet.

The first recognizable social media site, ‘Six Degrees’ was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that is still popular even today. ^[4]

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media can be categorized into several types according to the purpose of them.

1. Social Networks

•     Social networks are used to connect with people online. These networks transform nearly every aspect of modern life—from reading news to sharing vacation photos to finding a new job—into a social experience. As a result of that, the term “Relationship networks” is associating with the social networks. ^[5]

Examples: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

2. Media Sharing Networks 

•  Media sharing networks are used to find and share photos, video, live video, and other media online. The people have the opportunity to create posts, edit the photos and videos and also, the opportunity stream live videos in these networks. ^[5]

Examples: Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, Vimeo.

3. Discussion Forums

• Discussion forums are used to find, discuss, and share news, information, and opinions. These are one of the oldest types of social media. As the users are allowed to be anonymous in these sites, they are not shy to express their honest opinions. Discussion forums can be considered as a good source to go for deep research on the people’s opinion on the subjects. ^[5]

Examples: reddit, Quora, Digg.

4. Bookmarking and Content Curation Networks

• Bookmarking and content curation networks are used to discover, save, share, and discuss new and trending content and media. These networks introduce the creativity and inspiration for people who seek information and ideas. They allow the users to collect and store the interested contents and media. ^[5] 

Examples: Pinterest, Flipboard.

5. Consumer Review Networks

• Consumer review networks are used to find, review, and share information about brands, products, and services. The majority of the users prefer to get ideas about restaurants and travel destinations via these sites. ^[5]

Examples: TripAdvisor, Yelp.

6. Blogging and Publishing Networks

• Blogging and publishing networks are used to publish, discover, and comment on content online. These sites allow the people to publish their ideas and get the encouragement by new discoveries and reviews. ^[5]

Examples: Medium, WordPress, Tumblr.

7. Interest Based Networks

• Interest based networks are used to connect with others around a shared interest or hobby. These sites focus on a single subject, such as books, music, or home design that helps the users to stay on their interest. ^[5]

Examples: Goodreads, Last.fm.

8. Social Shopping Networks

• Social shopping networks are used to spot trends, follow brands, share great finds, and make purchases. The elements of ecommerce appear on these sites. Some sites allow small businesses and individual crafters to sell their products while the customers are lowed to choose the items according to their interests. ^[5]

Examples: Etsy, fancy, Polyvore.

9. Sharing Economy Networks

• Sharing economy networks are used to advertise, find, share, buy, sell, and trade products and services between peers. According to a report by digital research firm Vision Critical, “The collaborative economy today works because trust can be verified electronically through social networks… social media lets the collaborative economy run smoothly.” ^{[6] [5]}

Examples: Uber, Airbnb.

10. Anonymous Social Networks

• Anonymous social networks are used to gossip, vent, and snoop. These sites allow the users to post content anonymously. These sites sound like fun but sometimes the people use them to bullying which is not a good way of using internet. ^[5]

Examples: Ask.fm, Whisper, After School.

11. Social Gaming Networks

• Social gaming networks are used to play online games. These games involve multi-player games aging from 10 years to 50 years. ^[7]

Examples: RevHolics.com, Raptr.com, Playfire.com.

 RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media use around the world in Jan 2024 ^[8]

More than a half of the world now uses social media. 4.33 billion People across the planet are using social media which records 55.1 percent of the global population. 99 percent of the social media users access via mobile and they spend more than 10 billion hours in social media which is equivalent of more than one million years of human existence.

The first social media site to reach a million monthly active users was MySpace – it achieved this milestone around 2004. This is arguably the beginning of social media as we know it.

This chart shows that there are some large social media sites that have been around for ten or more years, such as Facebook, YouTube and Reddit; but other large sites are much newer. ^[9]

TikTok, for example, launched in September 2016 and by mid-2018 it had already reached half a billion users. To put this in perspective: TikTok gained on average about 20 million new users per month over this period.

The data also shows rapid changes in the opposite direction. Once-dominant platforms have disappeared. In 2008, Hi5, MySpace and Friendster were close competitors to Facebook, yet by 2012 they had virtually no share of the market. The case of MySpace is remarkable considering that in 2006 it temporarily surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US.

Most of the social media platforms that survived the last decade have shifted significantly in what they offer users. Twitter, for example, didn’t allow users to upload videos or images in the beginning. Since 2011 this is possible and today more than 50% of the content viewed on Twitter includes images and videos.

Facebook has dominated the social media market for a decade, but five other platforms also have more than half a billion users each

With 2.3 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform today. YouTube, Instagram and WeChat follow, with more than a billion users. Tumblr and TikTok come next, with over half a billion users.

The bar chart below shows a ranking of the top social media platforms. ^[9]

The most recent data available of the world’s usage of Social Media [8] 

INVOLVEMENT OF YOUNG ADULTS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

THE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media can be influential on young adults in both positive & negative ways. Following is a dive into both of those influential ways.

A) POSITIVE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ^{[11] [12]}

1. Develop Critical Thinking by Using Social Media for Academic Projects.

• Social media allows the person to meet the people with the experiences in the relevant subject. Connecting with others through social media is far more interesting than reading an article.
• It also helps someone to understand what they read in the article if they meet someone with the experience. This also develops the self-advocacy in a person.

2. Socializing. 

• Social media provides a way to connect and create community, in the absence of in-person contact.
• It develops the sense of community where the people are in distance. It also allows them to exchange ideas and learn new things.
• Accordingly, it practices the person to protect their privacy when dealing with others. This will invariably result in them becoming more confident in life.

3. Motivate to Strive for Greatness.

• Social media can be a catalyst for motivating the young adults to believe that they can accomplish great things.
• Following the inspirational pages and personalities would help in instilling positive values and great life lessons. The experienced people of the field are always ready to teach this group of people.
• Social media also teaches the value of expressing gratitude, showing kindness, acting with respect, and believing in their own potentials.

4. Provide a Platform to Showcase Creativity and Reading Skills.

• Social media provides the facility to meet the mentors of art and literature which leads the young adults to develop the creativity.
• There are reading clubs and societies. They are good places to share ideas, review the books and recommend their favorites to others. It might tempt them to grab a book instead of the devices too.

5. Provide the Young Adults a Voice. 

• As the young adults master their identities and find their places in the society, the social media has allowed them to develop a voice of their reactions from the posts, comments and reviews. This can be mentioned as a positive influence when exposed to the right outlets.

6. Spread Social Awareness and Kindness. 

• Social media allows to search information on people, explore new ideas, express what they want and connect with the world. Through these young adults meet new people from different cultures and traditions. It is a great platform to start campaigning for their rights and the rights of the other people of the world.
• Social media gives the opportunity to get feedback from the work that they produce.
• It gives them a safe space to get unsolicited advice from others who are skilled and experienced on the subject matters.

7. Promote Civic Engagement.

• Social media is a place where the young adults connect with a world of ideas and a world of possibilities. The mixture of their ideas with the ideas on social media can create marvelous thing. They can make productive use of their ideas to conduct research, reach to experts and get the feedbacks for their works.
• They can ask what they want to know and get more knowledge on the relevant subjects.
• They can express themselves, share their works and get feedbacks and encouragement.

8. Promote and Teach Essential Job Skills.

• A person should practice to maintain their emotions as an essential job skill. Social media helps the young adults to learn to take criticisms from the strangers without being grown into a digital fight.
• It practices to think twice before posting or speaking and avoid embarrassing themselves and hurting others.

9. Keep in Touch with the World.

• Social media refreshes the users from the most recent happening around them and the world.
• It expands the capacity to know new things.
• It refreshes the information base of the young adults.

B)  NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ^{[13] [14]}

1. Time Wastage.

• As social media has a countless information, the person who seek the information should spend much time to figure out the relevant and important points that they want in their work.
• The common error of the social media users is checking their social media account multiple times a day. It takes only few minutes but according to the studies, it takes several minutes to refocus on the task that they were working on.

2. Mental Health Issues.

• Social media is used to vent everything from the customer services to the politics. Due to this reason, the regularly used platforms are reportedly containing a high level of stress.
• As the users check their social media accounts, they lose the constant attention on a specific matter. The constant distraction of social media contributes to shortened attention spans.
• Due to the potential breach of privacy, the young adults experience different mental disorders.
• Cyber-bullying, negative posts and disturbing photos and video clips directly effect on the mood of the users. And as it develops, it results the symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• According to the studies, spending more time in social media directs to social isolation. It develops the lack the sense of social belonging that distant the young adults from the real community. They experience low sense in engagement with other in the society. 
• The use of several apps and editing application hides the reality of the world today. As the users use these when uploading the photos and videos. The young adults try to compare themselves with these fake posts and feel negative emotions such as frustration and envy.
• There is a risk of damaging one’s self esteem as it makes people feel inadequate and unattractive due to the fake posts.

3. Addiction.

• Social media is changing faster than the human life. As well as the young adults are interested in exploring new things. So, the curiosity towards learning new things attach them to social media where they automatically get addicted to it. 
• The excessive use of social media also results on relationships problems, worse academic achievements and less participation in real community.

4. False information.

• There is no any perfect filter to confirm the correctness of the information which are uploading to the social media. So, the online rumors are spreading about the safety of the foods, several products and treatments that mislead the young adults.
• The incorrect self-diagnosis also happens due to the misleading information.

5. Potential to Lose Private Data

• There is a chance to lose all of your private and confidential data when using Social Media. The main reason for this could be hackers or using social media on unsafe networks with malware & spyware.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that social media is like a knife. A knife can be useful in normal day-to-day life as well as it can be used as a weapon to harm a living being. Much like the modern world, the good side of the social media accompanies a cost. Most of the social media networks are free for all of the users while earning heavily through advertisements.

Social media already has a major influence on today’s society. Social media has become an essential part of young adults’ lives. There are some negative impacts of social media. But it is nearly impossible to remove all the negative impacts. Since omitting social media or banning social media is not an option. The only option would be working with it while decreasing negative impacts of the social media.

One of the ways to reduce the negative impacts of social media is to keep an eye on young adults’ social media activities by their parents. Parents should not let them use social media in harmful ways. Schools also should take steps to educate the young generation with precautions to get rid of negative effects of social media.

While there are some bad sides to the use of Social Media we can’t completely ignore the good side of it as well. So at the end of the day the final decision is left for the User. Social Media Can be Very Useful in Certain Circumstances, So Remember to Use It Wisely.

REFERENCES

1. “Social Media Definition 1”
2. “Social Media Definition 2”
3. “What is Social Media?”
4. “History of Social Media”
5. “Types of Social Media”
6. “The Report by Digital Research Firm Vision Critical”
7. “Social Network Games”
8. “Global Social Media Overview”
9. “Rise of Social Media”
10. “Social Media Demographics”
11. W.Akram – Department of Computer Applications, GDC Mendhar, Poonch, India, R.Kumar – Department of Computer Applications, GDC Mendhar, Poonch, India, “A Study on Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Society”
12. Mary Ann Lowry, M.Ed, ADHD Coach; Tom DeSpiegelaere, Digital Marketing Expert and Founder of Tom Spicky; Karen Gross, Author and Educator; Nickia Lowery, Counselor; Jonas Sickler, ReputationManagement.com; Dimitris Proko, UK Department for Work and Pensions; Jason Perkins, San Diego SEO and Online Marketing Inc.; “15 Examples of Positive Impacts of Social Media”
13. “Is Social Media Bad For You? The Evidence and the Unknowns”
14. “The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and Individuals”

Stay Informed, Stay Safe!