Social Media and Its Stark Influence on Society

Abstract

This research paper discusses the full impact of social media on society, and whether these impacts are positive or negative, or even both. The research paper goes through several different aspects of the impact of social media, from interpersonal relationships and communication to familial relationships and youth behavior. I think if I had more time to develop the paper, I could have added more research about social media, like, for instance, their influence on an international, global level. Or perhaps I could have even discussed about social media in education, and its benefits. Every morning, almost every individual's first instinct is to reach for their phone and check through their notifications and social media accounts. They wake up scrolling through them, liking pictures, commenting, sharing, tweeting, etcetera. There is never a moment where an individual is not connected through a social media platform somehow. Social media has become big part of our lives, and most of us cannot live without it. We spend every waking second engaging with it, learning and receiving new information, ideas, and concepts through it. This has shaped our culture, our society, and, perhaps, even our general view of life. And in the moments where we are not attached to it, we react in ways that are similar to the symptoms of withdrawal. People hardly consider or ponder about why we feel that way, and how heavily social media impacts us as a society. When social media comes to mind, many think of their instagram accounts, or how many likes they got from a tweet they blasted out this morning. So caught up in this whirlwind of staggering likes, shares, and tweets, not many notice how social media has been shaping our society, how addictive it is, and how it has been influencing our thoughts, actions, security, and confidence. In fact, a journal article titled, " The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families, " written by Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, states that " 22% of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day, and more than half of adolescents log on to a social media site more than once a day, " and about " seventy-five percent of teenagers now own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for