This article is the first episode of a series called « PEOPLE AND SOCIAL MEDIA ». This series aims at studying the impact (good or bad) of social media on people, especially on their behavior. So, if you use social media, you should take a seat and read this series attentively. No matter if you can live without them or not, this series will answer all your questions : how can I live without social networks and feel integrated in our society ? How much time a day should I spend on social networks ? Enjoy your reading !
First assessment : social media are playing a big role in people’s lives
Nowadays Social Media play a big role in people’s life, but a few years ago it wasn’t that big yet. Now, people are able to use it for almost anything in their daily life. Social Media has got to the point where it shapes our life and makes a great or bad impact in it.
What is the impact of social media on people ? Is it good or bad ?
It is a fact that social media have changed the way people interact and carry on with their everyday lives. With internet becoming a necessity in every home or office, majority of people who are online spend most of their time on social media sites.
People don’t take the time anymore to communicate with each other in real life, they see it as a waste of time, almost like an unnatural thing to do, how sad…
When they feel the need to communicate, it’s actually to “exist”, to show their online friends what they’re doing cause you know the expression “if you did not snap it, it did not happened”.
However social media has given power to people to spread their words, to keep up with what happened in the world, to make new friends and being supported by unknown people.
In every era, cultures go through numerous changes, and in recent years ours has been more impacted than anything else by social media. So, we can say that social media are a great innovation, but an innovation that can become nocive for people.
Are social media used in a good way nowadays ?
Before answering that question, let’s have a look at how we use social media. A recent study has shown that in 2017, we spent 135 minutes per day on social media. Through the years, this number has never stopped growing. Let’s have a look at it.
TIME SPENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA PER DAY
This increase can be explained by the fact that social media are now a media that became very popular for the possibilities they give but also the fact that smartphones give now access to all social media. It became so easy to access to them. In less than 2 minutes you can download Facebook and create your profile.
What are we doing on social media ?
Here’s a top 10 of the reasons we use social media and I bet you will all agree with it. As we can see in this top, the reasons why we use social media are mainly entertaining reasons (find funny content, fill up spare time…).
But of course, they are useful for other things : contact your friends, stay up-to-date with news.
Now, let’s try to answer that question : Are social media used in a good way nowadays ?
The answer is nobody can tell. Each of us can use social media as he wants to. But one of the question we can ask ourselves is : Is it really useful to spend that much time on them ?
2 hours a day on social media is huge. Think about all the other things you could do instead. Social media are becoming fast-food : more contents, more informations, more services… And sometimes it can even turn to the addiction.
One of the other problem is that informations on social media aren’t filtered. It means that even when you want to use it to share you have to be aware and careful with news. Mainly on Twitter, with more than 500 millions tweets a day.
But we don’t burry the social media. Don’t forget that those are really helpful and useful. They offer so much possibilities but we have to be careful with them. Stay aware and conscious.
Second assessment : in some extreme cases, social media act like drugs on people
A like, a tweet, a selfie on Instagram, without forgetting the stories on Snapchat... We multiply connections and addictions to social networks. But since when has become this attendance problematic? Wouldn’t our frenzied consumption hide a real dependence? Are social media like a drug for some people ?
According to Michael Stora, psychologist and psychoanalyst, specialist of the digital worlds, the concept of addiction to the virtual is not recognized by any scientific authority. He also says that he has never received a patient for an addiction to social networks. "When we think in terms of addiction, we generally assume a break in social connections. In the context of social networks, the individual continues to live, to leave home, to go to work... This doesn’t prevent however some people have a real compulsive behavior towards social networks: they check almost obsessively that what they posted has been commented, liked or if they have new follower. These compulsive behaviors are facilitated by the consultation of social sites on mobile so everywhere and at any time, at home, in meeting, in the metro… ». It is actually very difficult to quantify an "abuse of social networks". We can estimate that a connection every 30 minutes is of the order of the unreasonable, but it can vary according to the individual.
How to treat an addiction to social media ?
In the absence of strict control, this means of communication can become a dependency that can waste a lot of time and even affect your performance at work and your relationships. It is difficult to stop our habits completely, but it is interesting to be able to control them. There are 5 tips to limit the hours spent on social networks.
First of all, it’s wise to look at the number of hours spent on these tools, in order to become aware of the hours lost because of that.
Afterwards, it’s advisable to remove the apps from our phones because we do not realize the number of times we spend on them.
However, if you do not feel ready to say goodbye to them, turn off your notifications. Thanks to this tip, you will no longer instantly look who likes your last picture.
Give yourself a "digital break"! It could be only happiness: more time to spend with your loved ones, to make beautiful manual things, to read...
Obviously, if the addiction proves to be more serious, it is possible to consult a person well trained on this subject, as a therapist. You can then discuss your addiction.
To what extent can social media be beneficial ? How should you use them to avoid the addiction ?
Before explaining how social media can be beneficial for people, we must explain how they can be nocive for people. First of all, a study released by the University of California Irvine (UCI) showed that a lack of sleep can be caused by a prolonged presence on internet, especially on social networks as Facebook. Briefly, this survey showed that there was a link between the time spent on social networks and a chronic lack of sleep, a moody mood and a lower productivity.
Another survey showed that social networks make people live beyond its means. Indeed, 56% of Canadians aged from 18 to 30 admitted that they were living beyond their means because of the influence of social networks, especially Instagram.
Besides, spending time on social networks implies you share things on social networks, and that implies you have to care about your e-reputation ! Indeed, your future employers are able to see what you share, what you do with your friends, what you do during your parties thanks to social networks, and showing it to your potential boss isn’t a good idea at all.
Finally, we could highlight an other issue due to social media : the cyber harassment. According to the UNICEF, 12,5% of children aged from 6 to 18 have already been bullied on social networks.
So, if we had to summarize the cons of social networks in 4 words, they would be : lack of efficiency, expense, e-reputation, cyber-bullying (7 words, actually).
Now, the new question is : how to avoid these 4 issues while keeping using social networks ? First, to keep your efficiency, you should turn off your phone, computer etc. 20 minutes before going to bed, so that you sleep well and you keep your productivity the next day.
Then, to avoid spending all your money because of the influencers who are influencing your choices, you should avoid following them because they are just paid to influence you, brands are giving them free products and money to tell you « hey ! This product is wonderful, you should buy it and test it ! ». You should only follow your friends, family, and some news channels if you want to keep posted about what’s going on in our world !
Furthermore, to have a good e-reputation, you have to be really careful about what you post on social networks ! You should avoid to post pictures of your parties. If a friend of yours identifies you on an embarrassing picture on Facebook, you can ask him to delete it or you can withdraw it from your profile. On Instagram, you can set your profile as a « private » one, so that only the people who are following you can see your posts, and you can accept who is following you.
To decrease the cyber harassment, you simply have to be empathic and to cars about what you are saying to people through social networks, would you say the same things in real life ? Would you like him/her to say it to you ? If you are victim of cyber bullying, you have to talk about it around you ! You can talk about it to anybody you trust, your parents, your siblings, your friends, your teacher or whoever. You can not stay quiet, you have to talk about it because if you don’t, you’ll probably make a depression. If you do, people will help you to overcome this harassment and they will make you stronger.
Social media are a good solution to keep in touch with your family and old friends all around the world. It is also a good way to keep informed about what’s happening in the world if you check your sources and pay attention to fake news. In your professional life, social media can also help you : you can communicate with your colleagues faster than ever thanks to the e-mails. Social media are also a source of divertissements. Briefly, social media are full of benefits, but these benefits can degenerate and become cons, it just works as everything in real life.
How should parents raise their children with social networks ?
If you are a parent reading this question, you may wonder « should I allow my children to go to social networks or should I prevent them from it ? ». If you are a teenager, you may think « oh god, my parents are so annoying with social networks, they are too old to understand ».
Doesn’t matter if you are a teenager or a parent, we will give you the best advices :
The issue of parenting is crucial in educating young audiences so that children and teenagers use digital tools thoughtfully. Parents are sometimes poorly informed: their children potentially have two, three, four, five accounts and 50 to 300 contacts on different social networks they use. If parents are not aware of the practices of their children upstream, it is even more difficult for them to make the right decisions and support them. Digital is a diffuse topic and in addition, in perpetual evolution. Many parents find themselves in a position of ignorance, which basically prevents them from fulfilling their role as educators on this subject. They may feel overwhelmed and not understand how social networks such as Snapchat work.
In any case, parents can’t totally prevent their children from social networks, they are too important in our current society, especially at the age of adolescence. However, parents should keep an eye on what their children are doing on social networks : they can create accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. to see what their kids are posting. In this way, they would also understand how social networks are working and it could even create a reconciliation between the parents and their kids ! Besides, parents have to remember that social networks are supposed to be forbidden to teenagers aged under 13, so they shouldn’t allow their children to have an access to Facebook, etc. before being 13, even if it’s really difficult nowadays…
The first episode is over. For the next episodes, you won’t just have to read, we will need your participation ! Each episode will deal with a particular social network and we will ask you to give your opinion about them in the comments ! In this way, we’ll be able to give a piece of solution to all the problematics highlighted in this first episode (the one you just read) !
The Awareness team.
Anissa, Tom, Manon & Guillaume.
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