Technologies which allow us to share information, pictures and ideas among three things are what we call social media. Today, social media has created new styles of communication for us, which made huge impact on everyday lives of people. In modern days this relaxation period has turned into an anti-social environment where nobody talks to each other face-to-face but text or instant message each other and never go into a genuine human interaction with one another.

Social media has brought people with common interest together and expanded horizon of ideas worldwide. However, there has also been an impact of social media on human behaviour and society. Social media is a controversy topic in today’s society. Some people think that social media destroys human interaction and real life human relationships. While others think that social media is a blessing to humanity. Social media is a boon or a bane is a matter of debate. However, one thing is sure that social media has become an integral part of lives of people of all ages today. Therefore, it is important for us to understand benefits as well as drawbacks of social media in order to make right choice.

Human interactions have been decreasing ever since smart phone became available to public. Now, when anybody goes outside their house everyone pays all attention on little screens that keep them occupied and distracts them from real world.

Human interactions have been decreasing ever since smart phone became available to public. Now, when anybody goes outside their house everyone pays all attention on little screens that keep them occupied and distracts them from real world. I think one of main effects that social media will have on future of society is changing way that people interrelate with one another. On one hand, this can be negative; social media gives people an option to post or engage in rude or inflammatory behaviour under guise of being hidden behind a computer screen.

One predominantly pernicious concern is whether time spent on social media sites is eating away at face-to-face time, a phenomenon known as social displacement. Fears about social displacement are longstanding, as old as telephone and probably older. “This issue of displacement has gone on for more than 100 years,” says Jeffrey Hall, PhD, director of Relationships and Technology Lab at University of Kansas. “No matter what technology is,” says Hall, there is always a “cultural belief that it’s replacing face-to-face time with our close friends and family.” Social media became a form of communicating with a person you know in real world, people have turned that into forms of harming one another by interacting with them on a specific website. This kind of social interaction is harming person who is getting cyber bullied through social media.

Today we all agree that social networking has wholly changed our way of being, communicating, working, or our relationships with our loved ones. To say it simply: Social networking has changed way we live. However there are many questions exist in our minds about how these social networking changed our lives? Thus query won’t be to ask if social networking changed our life for better or worse just because numerous people think that social networking have decent effects in our society, as much as there are people who think there are only evil effects in social networking. Like everything in life, we have pros and cons social networking.

Thus we can define Social networking as  practice of growing number of one’s business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals, often through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ etc. . so, As we are discussing impact of social media on our lives, it is matter of concern to discuss positive and negative impacts of social networking. As an individual in my view impact of social networking depends more on who is using it.

If we focus on benefits of social networking, first one we can notice is ability to instantly connect people from anyplace. Through social networks we can connect with our old friend with whom we lost contact for a long time. It also provides us easy and instant communication facility, we do not have to wait for an eternity to receive response from someone who has been asked for something. Through social media we can be well-versed anytime, everywhere on real-time. We don’t need any more to watch TV, or to listen radios to be informed. All information are on social networks. It also provides great opportunities to business owners, with help of social media business owners and other types of professional organisations can exactly know what customers think about one of their product, they can connect with customers, discuss with them. We can also count provision of fun and enjoyment as a benefit of social media. We can connect and discuss with friends, we can share humoristic videos with them. We can also watch what they share. We use social networking sometimes for relaxation.

Social networks have their dark side. Despite all these benefits social networking can also be harmful for us. Social networking can impact negatively our social links, can impact our health, our behaviour, our job in one word our everyday life. That’s why it is important to see negative impacts of social networking in our society. We can also have lot of negatives impacts of social networking in general.

One of negative effect of social network is rising of fake news, there are numerous information in social networking then it can easily get pretty noisy.  Sometimes it’s difficult to discriminate between true and false information. That’s why fake news rises increasingly. Most of interaction is doing through social networking. So we can see social networking are more and more substituting to real life. That’s why many experts say that “social networking are making us unsocial”. With all these social apps, news and messages are often distracting. So we can be unfocussed during driving because of one message received on Facebook, or whatsapp or any other social network which may become cause lot of accidents. Using social networking can also change our habits. It can make us sedentary but it can also disrupt our sleep. That can clearly impact our health. Social Networking have lot of negatives impacts in our society. That’s why we have to be careful with social networking. In end in my opinion most significant negative impact that social media carries in our lives are privacy issues, social peer pressure and cyberbullying. With our posts, comments and personal information’s that we share on social networks we can easily be stolen our identity.

To conclude we can see that social networks have both negatives and positives aspects. All depends to how we are using them. Social Media has expanded horizons of communication more than ever and has changed pace of life forever. While eliminating Social media from our lives is out of question, its usage can be moderated by limiting our time on it. We can just remember that we can focus to use social networks for all good points outlined in this text, but we have to be careful of falling victim to dark side of an online interaction. If used in right way, Social Media has ability to make our lives easier and convenient.

Published in The Daily National Courier, April, 10 2023

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