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Pitfalls of Social Media

Some disadvantages of social networking are addiction, friendships, and how it can become a distraction. According to an article in the Huffington Post by Britney Fitzgerald, “forty-five percent of responders said they feel “worried or uncomfortable” when email and Facebook are inaccessible.” Now-a-days society has gotten so dependent to their social networking; they cannot even leave their house without taking their phones or laptops to school. People cannot stand to be without their phones without having anxiety, we need to establish a control over the technology. “It’s not being on social networks that makes people anxious. It’s being away from them.” We have grown into this new culture where we cannot even go to sleep without checking our phones, and what is the first thing we do when we wake up? Check our phone. In fact, in a recent study Mobile Mindset study by Lookout “54 percent admit to checking their phones while lying in bed.” The unfortunate price we pay for social networking is lack of sleep. A similar study from the University of Bergen found that “people with poor sleeping habits were most likely to be Facebook-obsessed.” It has become apparent that one has created this dependency on modern technology that we have added these aps such as Facebook and YouTube to our cell phones, since we cannot even wait to get home and check from our computers. We don’t even send invitations anymore; all we do is send a Facebook invite.

Another article in the Huffington Post, The Addiction and Cost of Social Media by Sam Fiaorella he states that “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.” In this case social networking, the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, they are all free however, you are wasting time, emotion and privacy. “According to Nielsen and NM Incite's The Social Media Report 2012, “consumers continue to spend more time on social networks than on any other type of Internet site.” “As of July 2012, the total time spent accessing and engaging in social media sites has increased 37 percent in the U.S., representing 121 billion minutes.”

Emotionally we put our lives out there on social networking. We are willing to share everything we do on a daily basis and post our feelings. We create an “online version of ourselves” in which we are able to let people see and know any “version” we allow ourselves to be. “A study by the University of Waterloo as reported in Psychological Science demonstrated that Facebook engagement can increase the likelihood of depression in some people.”

Privacy is often a forgotten factor in social networking; people seem to forget that whatever they post online can follow them throughout life. Some jobs even check your social sites to make sure you are right for the job. Social networks keep track what you are interested in, you may think its because they want to learn more about you however, “the more personal the information they can acquire the more they can charge advertisers for access to you.”

According to Christine Rossen in Vitrual Friendship and the New Narcissism, in the past people would have painted portraits that represented wealth and social status. Today we post manipulated and photo shopped images of ourselves and post them onto our websites. We post background music and create our own personality in a sense to how we would like others to view us. According to a survey recently conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more than half of all Americans between the ages of twelve and seventeen use some online social networking site. Belonging to a social network you are able to “maintain a friendship without effort.” There is no need to remember your friends birthdays, there is a reminder online, you don’t even need to call them, you can just right on their “wall.” People are able to live their lives online, posting their favorite music, books, heroes, they can even play games online with friends. “We can learn all about the friends of our friends—often without having ever met them in person.”

How long can you go without checking your phone? Whether you are walking down the hallways with your phone in your hand, pocket, or a close compartment in your bags, social networking is a distraction. Most people think they are able to multitask however it takes a toll on their brain. According to Marcia Clemmitt in her article, Social Media Becoming a Worrisome Distraction, “When electronic devices were first becoming ubiquitous, some hoped they would teach a new generation how to multitask better than previous generations did. But research indicates that people who grew up with electronic devices “really can't multitask.” You cannot do two or more tasks at once, even though you might think its easy, it adds stress to your brain. Also in return you will not do as good of a job. When you sleep with your phone next to you and wake up due to text messages and alerts, these interruptions make it harder for the brain to sink in what you learned in that day and memories. In the future they want to have “tech breaks” to help people tolerate the anxiety of being away from their phones. However this would not work because “when you take technology away, you will lose people in 3-5 minutes.”