Social Media and Its Impact: Individuals and Society

Abstract

Social media nowadays is a massive topic for people to discuss, and it is even starting to occupy people’s lives. Many people would see social media as a widespread technique that helps them to relax and search for information. Still, not many would think that it would be a marketing strategy or political skill and would harm people’s mental health in a certain way. However, these are the adverse effects social media would bring to individuals and society without people realizing it. Social media would not only cause addiction, which is one of the few things that people recognize as the negative impact of social media, but it would also cause low self-esteem because people commonly try to find a feeling of importance on the internet, but when things go to a different direction, it will hurt their self-esteem in multiple ways. More uncommonly, advertising companies or politicians would usually use data collecting companies to help them manipulate people’s behavior and use it to make companies’ brand and politicians more influential and use strategies to make themselves seem more trustworthy on social media. This essay is aimed to show how social media is starting to impact individuals and society by using the way of literature review.