Many people believe that social networking sites (such as Facebook) have had a negative impact on in

From cringey memes on Reddit to viral vlogs on Youtube, contents created and shared among creators, artists and even everyday individuals popularize the Internet on multiple social networking platforms. Boosted self-esteem and glory from receiving positive reviews replied by followers, subscribers and fans stimulates us to invest our time and effort on editing and publishing great contents. While we are busy connecting with people we barely know on virtual world, some raise their concerns regarding the potentially unbounded detrimental impacts social media such as Instagram and Tinder have had on individuals and community which can’t simply be ignored.

While social networking sites are meant to create augmented reality that promote interaction between individuals that are ‘virtually’ impossible to achieve in real word, they become common barriers to effective communication, rendering our actual social skills deteriorated. The only tools we can use for exchange of information on social network are nothing but text and image, which are barely sufficient to express our thoughts and ideas. Real-world communication, on the other hand, is much more complicated than involving words and emojis. Factor including facial expressions, gestures, vocal pitch and volume, etc. should all be taken into account for effective communication. Furthermore, inexperience in face-to-face interaction inevitably leads to poor interpersonal and social skills which are vital for success in various situations such as job interviews. Hence, overindulgence in social media is likely to put individuals in plenty of disadvantageous situations.

Net neutrality enable users to enjoy an indiscriminate, open-source global network where users can easily access, share, exchange useful information from any device on any online network. It, at the meantime, however, opens the gateway for undesirable information to pop up on browsers. While some may be benign in nature, others are dangerous enough to cause social turmoil. These sources mostly come from trolls (an internet slang which defines individuals whose post provocative contents on the internet deliberately) and they can crawl all over the internet through social networking sites, upsetting and irritating people, which often results in instability within seconds. President Trump’s recent offensive twitter post towards women in general was a typical sexist comment that caused disturbance instantly globally. It seems that the negative impact social media have had on society as a whole is no longer a mystery to us.

Useful or not, social networking sites have certainly done considerable amount of damage to both individuals and society in various ways. That being said, prompt remedial procedure should be taken to ensure those negative impact can be minimized and positive impact amplified. While we exploit online resources on social media, it is far more crucial for us to use them wisely instead of taking them for granted.