The role that social media plays in society today is difficult to overestimate. Empirical studies show that an average American spends at least two hours a day on social media (Kardaras, 2016). There is no agreement in regard to the type of effect that social media platforms have on an individual. Whilst some note that social media helps to maintain old friendship and encourages new contacts, the majority of scholars agree on the negative effect that social media brings to humanity. This paper argues that social media possess a high addictive potential, might cause attention deficit disorder, and typically leads to stress.
Social networks typically possess a significant risk of dependence. This addiction develops not immediately. If a person tries drugs once, twice, three times – and this is it, the substance became irreplaceable for the metabolism (Ali Aljabry, 2017). Dependence on social networks can be formed for months, and sometimes even for years. Initially, a person comes to his or her account once a day, a week – several times a day, you see, and in a few months they update their page several times an hour to the detriment of his basic work. And even if now the time spent on the activity in Facebook is insignificant, it is not a fact that in the near future a person will not become dependent. Many people, whose work is directly connected to the computer, do not even leave the workplace from their profiles in the social network (of course, if their managers allow it).Addiction to social networks, in its turn, lead to a number of other problems. It is important to understand that the developers of social media do everything possible in order to make one’s experience working with this type of media as enjoyable and as pleasurable as possible. Typically, a big group of psychologists and marketologists work together in order to give social media user this type of experience. Thus, the pleasure cells in a person’s brain are stimulated, and he or she gets addicted.
As it has already been mentioned above, human brain gets used to this type of work with information and gradually loses the ability to hold attention for a long period of time. As a result, there is a high risk of attention deficit or hyperactivity disorders (Mathur, 2016). This is a side effect generated by the philosophy of information integration: when working with a single web interface, a person begins to combine many activities such as communication, listening to music, discussing meetings. Indeed, a user is tempted to commit to everything at once and perform several processes in parallel. This has a negative effect on one’s thinking capacity. It becomes difficult to hold attention for a long time, for example, on reading a book. Human mind, following the acquired habit, begins to jump from one subject to another. Therefore, there are difficulties in terms of consistently reflecting and think about one problem because attention constantly “floats away”. This problem is especially relevant in the context of the younger generation. Children’s thinking process is much more vulnerable than the one of adults, and therefore it is easier to adopt harmful standards of thinking, which are formed, among other things, by social networks.
When working in the mode of an uninterrupted flow of information and successive emotional impressions, the brain becomes very tired and the body experiences stress (Bucher, Fieseler & Suphan, 2013). In addition, when using social networks, an individual is typically looking at the monitor, and the surplus of such activity in itself leads to fatigue. When one spends a lot of time in social networks, their brain is engaged in meaningless and purposeless activity, which cannot be called a full-fledged intellectual work. A person just occupies his or her brain with some meaningless things, not thinking about the quality of incoming information. Instead, one could think about something significant, come to the solution of life’s problems, build plans for the future, come up with some useful idea, or read a good book. But this is all impossible as long as one’s mind is puzzled by chewing the Internet gum, turning them into a thoughtless and alienated zombie. Due to the fact that information arrives quickly and continuously, one does not have time to digest it, or to think it over. In the meantime, deep emotions are not being developed as a response incoming impressions, since this requires time and peace, which is not present in conditions of convulsive assimilation of information.
In conclusion, social media possess a high addictive potential, might cause attention deficit disorder, and typically leads to stress. It is important to understand that the developers of social media do everything possible in order to make one’s experience working with this type of media as enjoyable and as pleasurable as possible. Typically, a big group of psychologists and marketologists work together in order to give social media user this type of experience. Thus, the pleasure cells in a person’s brain are stimulated, and he or she gets addicted. In addition, human brain gets used to the type of work with information that social media offers, and gradually loses the ability to hold attention for a long period of time. Finally, when working in the mode of an uninterrupted flow of information and successive emotional impressions, the brain becomes very tired and the body experiences stress. This calls for the importance of limiting the amount of time spent on social media.
- Ali Aljabry, A. M., Ahmed Jaafari, A. A., Mohammed Salawi, M. A., Taher Majrabi, F. A., Ahmed Hazzazi, N. M., Khormi, A. A., & … Musa Alqahtani, S. A. (2017). Effect of Social Media Network on Social Relations and Academic Achievement Among Medical Students. Egyptian Journal Of Hospital Medicine, 69(7), 2910-2917.
- Bucher, E., Fieseler, C., & Suphan, A. (2013). The Stress Potential of Social Media in the Workplace. Information, Communication & Society, 16(10), 1639-1667.
- Kardaras, N. (2016). Generation Z: Online and at RIsk?. Scientific American Mind, 27(5), 64.
- Mathur, Y. (2016, September 14). BRIEF: Social media sites have created attention deficit in consumers: Mahesh Bhatt. Hindustan Times.
