PEER REVIEW

Danniella Arishaba

August 3, 2019

ENGL-1301-53331

Dr. Kandace Geldmeier

Are Instagram causing positive or negative human interaction?

Beep. Beep. Beep. You have an Instagram update. It’s two of your friends from high school wanting to follow. You’re so excited and accept they’re follow. After a few weeks you realizes the same person keeps leaving nasty comments on you post and when look to see who it is, it’s one of the girls from high school. You really upset but keep scrolling through the comments and realize someone else is leaving positive comments ever single time. Social Media, Instagram more specifically, has a way of impacting a person’s positive mental and physical state. Although Instagram is a great way to stay in touch with the world, friends, and family; it also has negative sides to it.

Negative comments from trolls are unpleasant but when the comments are from friends it affects a person more deeply. The effect can result in a low self-esteem, medical problems like eating disorders, insomnia, and depression. “Teenagers are already self-conscious and vulnerable to what others say, said Pate, the Sheppard Pratt psychiatrist. They may start comparing their lives to those of people on social media.” (McDaniels 2) Andrea McDaniels points out how social media causes body image issues, especially among the youth. Many young adults feel like if they don’t look like the Instagram models or Fashion Nova models that there is something wrong. What they fail to realize is that many of the pictures they see are face tuned and photoshopped.

Body image isn’t the only negative side affect of Instagram. People, especially this generation, would prefer people to communicate via Instagram or other social media rather than text message. The unfortune thing about this is that with text messages there is no way of reading a person’s facial expressions and or voice which can cause a misinterpretation. One of the research studies Clemmitt uses asked didn’t people of different ages which form of communication they prefer. The study showed that people born after 1900 prefer to text rather than face-to-face conversations while people born before preferring face-to-face. (Clemmitt 4) In this generation and age, most people will choose to stay on their phones or laptops then talk to their friends in front of them.

Although Instagram does have negative side effects, it also connects people. Instagram can be used to start a movement. In the research article, “‘Chapter Two: Social Networking Takes to the Streets.’ Issues in the Digital Age: Online Communication and Social Networking”, Jim Whiting emphasis that if people have a cause they will band together. One of the examples was about a man speaking out through Facebook. Morales’ social media post spread like a wildfire and attracted many sympathetic people cause his group to rise in numbers. Within a night he went from 100 to 1,000 people and up to 4,000 by the next day. (Whiting 13) Social media was used to speak out on a major current issue that affects the people around them.

Work Cited

Clemmitt, Marcia. "Social Media Explosion." CQ Researcher, 25 Jan. 2013, pp. 81-104, library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2013012500

McDaniels, Andrea K. "Does use of Social Media Affect Emotional Wellbeing of Teens?" Daily Gleaner, 14 Jun. 2017, pp. C.1. SIRS Issues Researcher, https://sks-sirs-com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org.

Whiting, Jim. “Chapter Two: Social Networking Takes to the Streets.” Issues in the Digital Age: Online Communication and Social Networking, 2012. SIRS Issues Researcher, https://sks-sirs-com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org.