Essay 4 - Negative effects of social media

I believe that the increased use of social media can make people more stressed and less focused. In my own experience I became very stressed when first being accustom to being reached by email at anytime of the day when being in a stressful situation, let say in a job situation were you find it hard to ever be able to be off work. However, when I became more used to always being reached by email I got used to this and could however lessen the stress it caused. But I think that the information “overload” that exists can make people more stressed than they themselves believe they are. Checking ones email every night before going to sleep may be custom to many people, but this habit may in fact have an impact on everyday life in the long run. But as said earlier this may be a problem people have started to handle and have come over. But I believe that some self-discipline that could be hard to develop may be needed. And that is why I think that this is or was a negative effect of social media.

In relation to this problem of information overload and self-discipline I also think that the function of always being able to be reached can become increasingly problematic and stressful. Services like Skype, msn, Facebook and mobile-internet increases this stress level and also has an affect on concentration and quality of task performance. Always being able to check ones email, msn, and facebook-account on the mobile phone while being on a subway (or anywhere) makes me stressed as my friends will know that if I don’t answer them in quite a short timeframe, than that most definitely is an active chose not to do so. I am sure that this absolutely will have a stressful effect on people being custom to these sorts of services.

People of today and especially younger people being custom to things like instant messaging since always, may have problems to concentrate while working, studying or performing a time-consuming task. I myself can have a hard time turning of msn while writing etc. This can really affect the performance outcome if focusing too much on communicating with friends online. Also the habit of checking in on any email every 15 min is something I have started doing if waiting for something important. This break from concentration may certainly affect the work I am performing. But this off course also comes with advantages such as the social media increasingly also update my learning etc., by at the cost of focus.

I think that people will be able to handle this in a more progressive way in the feature as I am certain that this will be something that will be discussed and thought about maybe also in an academic setting. It is in school that most people learn to read and have their first literary experiences. I don’t really know if social media will have an affect on in which way student will be able to read and think about literature in the future, but I think that the concerns about this problem of focusing while reading longer and more complicated texts is legitimate.

Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media.

In my mind, time is always a good excuse to blame the invention of social media, especially gaming, at least in Chinese society. From I was in junior school, the crisis over social media never stop. Parents and teachers complaint that too much time and energy was spent on gaming and the teenagers become violent and can not focus on study. I remember one extremity example is that one teenager stays in net bar for 7 days without eating anything and only play Warcraft and the result is that he died suddenly because of heart attack. Many news nowadays are also related to the negative effects towards the development of social media. In my mind, many of these news are aimed at teenagers who usually can not allocate their time in a reasonable way. Seldom a new blames adults who play too many games.

However, why people, no matter teenagers or adults, are still willing to spend more and more time on Facebook or Warcraft? From my point of view, I think one of good explanations could be that they can release pressure from the real world. In Sims or Warcraft, the player could be someone else and easier to gain the feeling of achievement in the virtual worlds. Besides, a good game can be treated as an enjoyable movie. They are good at story telling and enable to provide the players veritable sound and the real feeling of the scenes. Nevertheless, I think it’s hard to justify whether these social media provides enough value according to the time spent. Because it’s an individual evaluation behavior and the standard to define value could be various.

Another negative effect of social media is that it decreases physically active lives. I absolute agree with this argument. The virtual communication changes the way we usually chat or talk and reduces the frequency we contact friends in the real world. When we sit in front of computer for hours, like what I’m doing now, most of my body parts are staying in quiescence, only the brain and fingers are active.

To sum up, many of the negative effects I talked about above are due to the lack of self-mastery . In other word, these effects may be vanish if people can manage their time and energy in a more suitable way. But other negative effects, like the problems on language development and unpatience attitude because of the gaming culture, are difficult to alter and need long time to adjustment.

Essay 4 – Negative effects of social media-squeezed time.

As more and more social media services are available with the fast development of social technology, our 24 hours are gradually carved up by all kinds of internet-based products and services. In other words, social media services have melted into our daily life unconsciously. Every morning on the way to school or work, you may use your iPod or music cell phone to listen to the music. On the classes, you can see many students are always busy with text message. When you start working, you have to check several emails to make sure those important ones being replied on time. Many people own more than one email. Take myself for example; I have six emails, which are the Gmail, KTH email, SSE email, Hotmail, Yahoo email and Sina email. So I have to spend at least half an hour to deal with all the emails everyday although I have combined all the emails to my Gmail.

Besides the regular usage of internet, there are also some pathological use such as excessive chatting and digital games addiction. Lots of people especially teenagers spend too much time on the internet gaming, most avatars in the internet games are designed to have a higher level and more experience based on the time consuming on the game. You can see some news saying that some teenager got mors subita after staying in front of the computer and playing a computer game without moving for 24 hours. Maybe this is an extreme example. However, Games really like the drugs, people can be hooked by them. A case in point could be one of my college classmates who play the World of Warcraft. He spent too much time on the game without self discipline, he was always absent from the class. He even would not like to go to the dining hall to have breakfast, lunch and dinner himself, it is common for him to ask somebody else to buy food and bring it back to the dormitory. Finally, he didn’t get the diploma because he failed too much courses. Obviously the social media didn’t provide enough value to justify the time he spent.

Since the side effects of the computer games have already come up, how should we deal with these problems needs considering. There is a regulation in China regarding the management of Net Café, which is the person who is under 18 years old are not allowed to enter the Net Café. How to avoid being addicted by the games? One way could be that the game can be designed to being played at most for 2 or 3 hours per day. Within the 2 or 3 hours, the players can accumulate their experience values to upgrade the levels of their avatars. Once the players play more than 3 hours, their experience values and avatars’ levels would be decreased automatically. The game company would definitely not like to design games in this way since the more time consumed on the games, the more revenue would be generated. However, whether the industry should take the social responsibility as well when making money? It is worth considering!

Essay 4 – internet makes me isolated

Based on my experience of internet, I become more and more “independent”, which Karin concluded it as “isolated”.

It is true that I can get myself isolated, and stay in my room without any connection with my friend for a few days when I feel so stressful. When I need a desk lamp or a curtain, I can go through those online shops and book one. The only thing that I should do after that is waiting them at home. when I was hungry, I can order a pizza online or using a cellphone, then my pizza will be on its way to my home. I appear offline when using the chatting tools, which means that nobody can start a talk when I don’t want to. Then someone disappears in our life without being sensed by others. We can get a conclusion for this, which is the convenient that the internet bring to us makes us independent and isolated.

I also think there is further reason for the “isolated” problem. Nowadays, friends tend to talk online, not face to face as before. That makes me think my friend is busy if he/she is offline. I would talk to them when they are online. If some of my friends, not so closed, appear offline for a long time, maybe I notice that but never wonder why he/she is so busy to show up on line. When people talk on the internet, we can not see each other. What we can see is the word that they type in, which can cheat his/her real feeling at that time. People become not so concerned with others. Greeting becomes more and more a routine procedure when we see our friend on line with less emotion. Even when we chat on the cell phone, our voice would betray some of the real emotion of the speaker. At least when I give a phone call to my friend, I always smile when saying hello or goodbye. I know that the other can sense it and smile too. However, when I was watching a tragedy using the online TV, I can also tell funny stories with my friend using the chatting tools on the internet.
The internet makes our lives more and more convenient and fast, but the platform is the screen which is such a cold and no expressions object. I would never imagine that if we face to a no expression object for a long time, we may become less facial expression, which reflects a person’s emotion.