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The Bad of Networks?

As the reliance on the internet grows, and more people use social media on an everyday basis, what was the pay off?

As someone who just graduated from high school, I understand the notion of being ‘super busy.’ Juggling grades, clubs, commitments, and a social life can get overwhelming, and I’m sure it’ll only get harder. However, Tim Kreider’s “The ‘’Busy’ Trap” brings up a good point. We’re not actually busy — we’re just tired. And to make things worse, we’re tired from things we forced on ourselves. But why do we force these things on ourselves? Once again, Kreider is able to give the answer — it’s because of social media. Sure, it’s great having a multitude of ties on social media, but only having passive engagement with most of these people isn’t great. On social media, most people post the best of themselves –I love doing it myself — but seeing the best of others makes you doubt yourself. Is this all I can do? Do I need to do more? And with that, people go into a downward spiral of doing more and getting more worned out.

On the discussion of passive engagement, there are problems there too. Although you feel connected to these friends of yours on Facebook that you made seven years ago, are you really connected to them? Social media creates a false sense of connection through passive engagement, but by doing this it can cause strong ties to become weak ties over time, since users won’t feel the need to physically go and connect with their friends. People see liking an Instagram post the same as eating lunch with their friends, causing ties to eventually break due to the lack of commitment.

It doesn’t end there. With social media, there has been an increase of weak ties between people. As learned in class, with weak ties, comes an increase of information, since you get to learn information not from your normal group of friends. But in this situation, information also means gossip and opinions. Not everyone uses social media for good. In fact, as seen from “Using Many Social Media Platforms Linked With Depression, Anxiety Risk” by Nick Zagorski, according to Samantha Rosenthal, a researcher at Brown University, more than 80 percent of Facebook users have had at least one negative experience on that specific platform, and around 60 percent have had four or more negative experiences on Facebook. Although not explicit, it is possible that the spread of gossip and the idea of not having any repercussions allowed for these negative experiences, creating more depression.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use social media. It’s great to keep in touch with others no matter how passive the engagement is. Sometimes, there’s just a need to back away from the fast pace of social media, and to just focus on yourself for a bit. There’s no need to always be on your phone checking someone’s status or checking how many likes your post made. Sometimes, it’s enough to do things for yourself.

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2017.1b16

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