Social media for and against essay

Social media has become an inalienable attribute of modern people’s lives. However, in my opinion, like most things it has advantages and disadvantages. I’ll talk about popular social media, like Facebook and TikTok, and not about thematic forums, which in broad terms could also be called social media.

Firstly, social media gives us an opportunity to express ourselves. You can post photos of your life, share ideas and achievements of yours. Thus improving your self-esteem and finding like-minded people.

A second point is that social media helps you store your memories. You can make your Instagram account private, so only you and your friends are the viewers of the content. Hence, you can use it as a cloud service for your photos for free.

It doesn’t only help you store the photos, but also lets you conveniently communicate with yours friends and loved ones. Though messengers and email services can do the job, having everything in one place is no doubt handy.

Also, it allows you to follow your friends. If yours friends’ lives are really important to you, then social media gives you a brilliant opportunity to know what is happening to them first-hand.

In addition, all the features stated above are provided free of charge. You may come with an argument about advertisement in the apps, but we will come to it in the cons section of the essay.

Last but not least, social media is universal and very easy to use. I know a few people who are in their 60s but use the services without any problems, which proves the point.

Let’s start with the biggest fault of the social media — it is addictive. Have you ever spent entire hours scrolling and then when closing the application couldn’t answer the question, ‘What have I just done? ’ It is a common problem: you open the app just to check if there are any messages, but then you see an interesting post and totally forget why you opened it in the first place; you start scrolling for hours. Subsequently, you close the application and feel quilt because of all the time that was spent in vain.

The second con is not the natural addictiveness of the social media, but the one that is designed by owners on purpose. It makes you stay in an app as long as possible, and they leverage as much as possible from you seeing their advertisements.

Another point is the privacy, which is often violated. For instance, Facebook knows your age, sex, job, circle of friends; you name it. Some people don’t see it as an issue, but it is quite disturbing when you are even involuntarily listened to. I’ve heard and read people reporting the situations where they would say something a few times and then see an ad that sells exactly the thing.

Continuing with the adverts, they are very annoying, and if you aren’t very tech-savvy, then it becomes a challenge to turn those off using third party applications.

A final and very important point is that social media is not just made to be addictive and literally steals your time, but it also affects your mental health, usually, badly. As our brains haven’t really changed much for the previous thousands of years, they still can’t feel the difference between real and remote communication, resulting in a fake fulfilment that you are not lonely and had enough human connection for a day. However, it can never really constitute a real, in person human interaction. Therefore, when you put your phone aside, the realization arrives that you are so lonely.

Overall, in my opinion, the cons overweight the pros. Thus, I recommend removing the social media from your lives, or at least, to limit your time spent on those.