Learn To Craft Essays On Effects Of Social Media And Social Networking Sites With This Example

The rise in popularity and usage of social media has changed the way people interact with each other. More specifically on the usage of social networking sites, individuals can now communicate freely at any time of the day through the use of virtual space. This has an advantageous effect especially when trying to reconnect with people we have lost contact with or has immigrated to another place. The ease of access for communication brought about by social networking sites has complicated matters surrounding interpersonal skills when it comes to personal interactions.
Social networking sites have given people a false sense of popularity by accumulating friends and people in a virtual interconnectivity. This implication is more prevalent and evident with younger people as compared with their older counterparts. For example, on Facebook, we see people with thousands of friends in their list. However, the truth of the matter is that these people only know a handful of people personally. The prevalent usage of social networking sites has changed from a medium for communication, to a medium of showing off an individual’s social status. People believe that their popularity virtually is something that is transferrable to their personal lives. This has led to some people having a disconnecting between their real and virtual lives wherein the latter is simply an illusion to hide what is really happening in their real lives.
Escapism is not the only effects of social media as we see that it has also affected people’s interpersonal skills when it comes to face-to-face activities. Given that people are not present in the same space when it comes to social networking sites, some individuals are finding it difficult to connect with people that they are talking to personally. The anonymity of communication when it comes to virtual space has led to the decline in interpersonal skills. Similarly when it comes to other skills, interpersonal skills need to be trained and used for it to be honed. Due to people being over familiarized with chatting online through their keyboards, their ability to talk with someone using their own voice is declining. Although it can be argued that video chatting or voice chatting is exempted from having the same effects as mentioned before, it still influences interpersonal skills due to it still occurring in a virtual space. Nowadays, it is not too uncommon to see people and groups of people who are fiddling with their mobile phones instead of talking with each other. This kind of awkward situations is something that has resulted from the proliferation of social networking sites.
Social media have also influenced the attentiveness and focus of individuals. This is evident in a larger demographic compared to people who are simply using the media to communicate with other people. Social media is not limited to social networking sites, but rather, it encompasses video-sharing sites like Youtube and also video games under the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) genre. These media have implications not only in the classroom setting, since its scope is something that cannot be limited. For example, in a classroom setting, this has a negative implication considering that students are being derailed from the work they are supposed to accomplish. People spend too much time in a virtual environment that they easily lose track of time and motivation to do something much more productive. On a larger scale, this distraction and lack of focus can result in haphazard situations especially when it comes to the outside world. People are too preoccupied looking at their phones even when outside of their homes that they fail to see anything or everything that is happening around them.
People are too preoccupied looking at other people’s virtual personas that they start comparing and competing about who has the better life. Due to people being too subjected and invested in their virtual realities, they get lost when it comes to disconnect and face the real world. People are being disillusioned when it comes to reality, and seems to rather stay in their virtual space. This implication can be seen when people interact and talk with each other personally. Sooner or later, if the conversation stops and awkwardness ensues, one or the other will bring out their phone and fiddle with it. Interpersonal skills are starting to decline, and the newer generation is starting to accept that there is simply nothing wrong with this phenomenon. The effects and decline of interpersonal skills will become more apparent with younger people who have been subjected to social media at a very early age. If they grow up fiddling in a virtual space instead of playing with other children outside, sooner or later this will lead to more people preferring to stay inside their homes alone.
Social media has become so integrated into an individual’s life that people are starting to become dependent of it. Connecting and communicating with other people online is not inherently a bad thing. However, when it comes to having to choose between the virtual and the real, people should always learn to choose the latter. By investing too much time online, this has led to various distractions and loss of time that may have been channeled instead to more productive activities. Interpersonal skills and communication should never be compromised.