Introduction;

Social media: is it a bad thing? That is the most frequently asked question
today. Well, there are always two sides of everything; it depends on your
perspective and how you perceive it as to what conclusions you draw about
this topic. The same goes for social media, most people admire it as a
revolutionary invention and some seem to take it as a negative impact on the
society. Personally, despite all this debate, and although I can see the huge
benefits of social media, I feel that the dangers far outweigh the positives. Why
you may ask. Well, firstly, studies suggest that young people who spend a lot of
time on social media are proven to be less confident in real life social
situations. This isn’t right surely? Social means interacting, not becoming
introverted. Social media is doing the exact opposite of what it was designed
for. Secondly, think about voyeurism: the act of constantly viewing other
people’s lives, or should I say, fake-perfect lives which has been shown to have
a negative impact on your mental health and general well-being. Why?
Because as social creatures, we cannot help but compare others' lives to our
own. Finally, although there are clear benefits to social media and the internet
as every fact or piece of information you may need to know can be found in
seconds at the touch of a button, we cannot ignore that other personal skills
are being neglected by the ease that mobile devices and technology give us.
Therefore, I think that the use of time on social media should be limited for the
younger generation and I hope that I will be able to convince you of this
too through my talk today.
Let’s go back to social media and inception of the internet. Social networks
started as a place to connect with your friends in an easy and convenient way.
Truly speaking, many of you might have found your old friends from school or
college who you had dropped out of touch with for one reason or the other on
such sites. I would say, you probably have and I thank social networks for this.
Social networks have provided us the opportunity to connect with people and
build better relationships with friends with people we are unable to meet
personally, and let them know about our life and take knowledge about their
lives and events happening with them; and this, of course, is a good thing.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that while everyone is busy
communicating online, young people are struggling with face to face
communication. Reports state that teenagers in 2019 are far less confident in
social situations like job interviews or training courses than they were 20 years
ago. Why? Because they spend very little time practising the art of
communication unless, of course, it’s looking at a screen. Extreme usage of
social media has reduced the level of human communication. But this is the
problem with social media and the complexity of its purpose. Whilst it sought
to connect people, what it has actually created is a generation who are less
connected and further apart than they have been in years. It’s frightening.
Behind a board, anyone can be whoever they want to be, but in real life and in
person, they often find it hard to communicate. We have done this. We have
allowed social platforms to explode and not cared about what it is doing to us
or our ability to communicate. What this will mean for the future, I don’t
know. I just hope that we don’t become silently social and only communicate
with each other via social media at the expense of real life.
Because of social networks the interaction with other people has become
effortless, and people have become driven to express a life that simply isn’t
real. Therefore, there has been an increase in online identities as opposed to
real identities as people seek to portray a life that is liked rather than a life that
is real. What does this do? It simply causes more pain in society as we try to
live up to lives presented to us that are false and impossible. Evidence of this is
people suffering with depression, anxiety, and general mental health
conditions. People who are not happy in their own personal lives can spend
hours trawling through photographs, comments and images of their ‘friends’
lives. They automatically then compare their friends seemingly perfect lives to
that of their own and feel sad, depressed or inadequate by comparison.
Therefore, it is clear that social media can have a detrimental effect on
people’s general well-being and surely, we should be looking to control the
amount of time young people spend on social media to protect the younger
generation from such pain?
Whilst some people might say that social media is a great way to
find out information about things and interact with people, I disagree. I
disagree because young people spend too much time on social media
throughout the day. On average a teen spends at least 6 hours a day on social
media. That is a quarter of the whole day just wasted on social media. Before
the development of social media people had to develop research skills,
organizational skills and communication skills. Without the luxury of searching
for facts at your fingertips, you had to be organized enough to get yourself to a
library, when it was open, take everything you needed with you, know where
in the library to search and know how to search for information. Are these
skills the younger generation have today? I don’t think so. Are these skills
they need to develop? Of course they are and they won’t develop them as
long as they have mobile phones in their pockets and laptops at home. All
social media and the internet have done is to create a generation of ease and
laziness rather than hunger and thirst for what more can be learnt or
discovered. What a shame that when we have the world at our finger tips, we
fail to use it s best we could.
In conclusion, as it can be seen, social media is definitely not the way to better
society. How can it be when it totally contradicts its purpose and makes
youngsters less sociable? How can it be when it causes depression, anxiety and
stress trying to emulate the false lifestyles sold to us on this platform? How can
it be when we sacrifice our development of skills for a life of ease and
simplicity? Therefore, I think that rather than using social, we need to think
about being social and developing ourselves outside of technology for our own
betterment. Wouldn’t you agree?

Thank you for Listening. Any questions?