Social Media isn’t the Problem but People are!


Our Perception about social media

Our Perception about social media

Lets search something on Google

If you search social media on google right now. Google’s suggestion will show results like social media is a curse, social media is bad for mental health, social media is bad for a relationship, social media is bad for students, and social media is bad for society. But what if I tell you that these are all myths. Social media is not a bad influence and social media is not worsening your health too. Surprising Right? then why have parents stopped kids from using mobile & social media? why do they want to throw all electronic gadgets away? Because they think or still believe that, using more Facebook, Insta, Snapchat will corrupt brain and children will fail in exam/life whatsoever because it steals focus, or it is a world of addiction, crimes, making teenagers less into religion & more into drugs. Few others also believe that social media is the originator of mental health issues in society and it causes all political extremism and radicalization.

There are so many other stories we all believe religiously, but all of them are false and wildly exaggerated. But if they are only false accusations then why does everyone think that social media is the problem?

Short answer: Because it is a myth.

It is a false myth activated in people’s minds that’s it, and there is no way you can replace that myth with an alternate narrative. As myths are persistent, stubborn, and memorable, no one has any proof against social media but everyone just can’t stop talking/sharing falsies about it since past decades, without any evidence.

Evidence social media is not bad, it is people who are using it.

The evidence & The Unknows

Brigham Young University in the USA researched whether using social media is impacting health issues? They researched for 8 long years just to find an answer to this question and the result says, social media usage is not related to individual changes of depression and anxiety, they are not correlated.

Instead, bullying, lack of sleep & problems with friendships can be few reasons for mental health issues in kids.  According to a report by National Statistics

The second evidence is about polarization due to social media. According to PNAS (Proceedings of National Academy of Science of the United States), the polarization of US demographic groups is not using the internet & social media addictively. Most of them are adults, who use social media the least. The study also says that millennials who use social media a lot are more neutral towards polarization.

Then why blame social media

Because it’s people who are misusing social media and then blaming it. People need the training to educate themselves for social media usage, try to avoid wasting tons of time on their cell phones swiping. For example, sugar is addictive we know, many other things are addictive but do we eat/use them all the time? No, we don’t.

In one way or another, we all are addicted to things, but the main question here is what are we getting as a result of it. If you use social media wisely to earn livelihood then you can extract good things. But if you are just swiping and wasting your time then you might be cutting many opportunities of your life. Hence one should make himself strong by controlling his emotional urge. I have also written a blog about Emotional intelligence, which trains the mind for a better understanding of feelings & emotions.

A small example of how bad things go viral and we all blame social media to do that. If something bad went viral on the internet we won’t blame that bad thing but we will question social media for making it viral. In real, It is us, who makes thing viral by watching, liking & spreading it. If you avoid bad things on social media then probably bad posts will also be cleaned out.

Social media connecting every kind of people

Social media does connect everyone in a second of time. So it’s not only normal people who are connecting but also extremists, who are using this platform to spread their hate & violence. Hence now you have to decide whom you want to connect with either any normal group or any extremist group? & what do you want to spread negativity or positivity?

Today every one of the same kind is finding every other same kind on the internet, this means if you are a fanatic then you will find other maniacs. And if you are joyful then you will attract cheerfully happy people out there.

So if anyone joins those hateful extremist groups/people on Facebook to spread shitty stuff, it doesn’t make Facebook awful but only those people who themselves are extremists & want to arouse hate.

 So step out from very popular myths and look at the big picture. It’s fully your decision for using social media to feed full of negativity or feed full of encouragement.


Press ESC to close