Position Paper

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Ryker Hill Cris Longhurst English 1010 10 April 2016 The Death of Human Interaction?

Like this! Post that! Tweet this! Pin that! Social media is a huge part of everyone’s lives right now. Approximately 1.73 billion people or one third of the world use social media. Most of us can agree that social media has had some sort of influence in our life, but in the end is it social media doing more bad than good? Are people spending too much time on social media? What negative effects do social media have on you? I believe social media ultimately has had a negative effect on us; academically, socially, and mentally.

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Social Media and Communication Social media was invented for the sole purpose of being able to express yourself online and to be able to stay connected with those you care about. About 70% of communication is through non-verbal signals, like hand motions, facial expressions, emotions, voice inflection, etc. Can we express all of this through a post or message? The answer is simple, no we can’t. People might say that they can use emoji’s to express themselves, but in the end you don’t get the same benefit like a face to face conversation. Social media can be a great tool to stay in contact with people, but have we taken it too far? When we hang out with friends we almost always talk about what we saw on social media or say things like “Did you see what Aaron posted on Facebook?” When hanging out does everyone look at their different social media apps?

1: Teenagers "hanging out" “Social media is the preferred method of communication among young people and more young people are spending more time on it” (Fowlkes). No matter what activity you do when you hang out with your friends, you will eventually end up checking social media at least once. Most teenagers have more than one social media, which increases the amount of time spent on social

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media. “92% of teens report going online daily…. 71% of teens use more than one social network site” (Lenhart). There are countless different social media sites.

2. A typical teenager's phone with different social media apps Negative Effects of Social Media on the Body Social media has had negative effects on your body as well as your interactive skills. Have you ever been doing something and you feel your phone vibrate but when you check it, there was nothing there? This is known as phantom vibration syndrome, where you think your phone goes off but it actually didn’t. In one study about 89% of people said that they feel the phantom vibration once every two weeks. Why do people experience phantom vibration syndrome? The brain seems to have rewired itself so that when you have an itch, your brain convinces itself it’s your phone vibrating. Because social media can give you immediate results of happiness with little to no effort required your brain will desire to have this happiness more and can actually cause your brain to crave social media, making it highly addictive. Social media triggers your brain to release dopamine; the most addictive drugs increase your dopamine activity which plays a factor in making social media so addictive.

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Social Media is a Distraction Social media also plays a big role in distracting us from what’s going on around us. At work take a look around and see how many people are using their phones instead of working. At James Madison University about 70% of students claimed that they were “sometimes” or “always” on social media during class (Daniel). Whenever people get to a destination and have time to kill, most of the time they will check their phones rather than socializing with people around them. There have been numerous cases of car accidents that have occurred because the driver was distracted by social media. Social media has even turned people into stalkers, sociopaths, murderers, etc. As you can see, social media changes people in little and big ways.

3. A guy about to get in a car accident because he was using social media while driving Does Social Media Have Any Good To It?

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There are some good aspects to social media; it is a very good tool to be able to stay in contact with people all around the world. Social media is very good for finding out information fast. But while it has its pros, there needs to be a line drawn. When social media becomes the main source of communicating with others, it can be a big problem. You can get addicted, same thing with being able to access information at incredible speeds, if you’re not careful your body will develop a constant craving for more new information. What Can We Do? People often think that they aren’t addicted to social media but go a day and tally how many times you get on a social media site, the amount will surprise you. Social media is additive and if we’re not careful we can fall victim to it. Social media only becomes a problem when we allow it to take control of our lives. Do we go out and hang out with our friends to have fun, or do we hang out with them so that we can post a new picture on social media? By limiting our daily amount of time on social media we can drastically decrease the probability of us becoming addicted to it. Even though social media was created with good intentions and has some good things about it, ultimately it has had more negative effects on us than good. Because of the prevalence and popularity of social media, our interpersonal communication skills are dying. Will you allow social media to destroy your communication skills?

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Works Cited Daniel, Naomi. The Downward Spiral for Cognitive and Social Skills. James Madison University, 21 April 2015. Web. 27 March 2016 Lenhart, Amanda. Teens, Social Media, & Technology. Pew Research Center. 9 April 2012. Web. 10 April 2016. Fowlkes, Jasmine. “Why Social Media is Destroying our Social Skills” USA TODAY. October 11 2012. Web. March 5. Tardanico, Susan. “Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication” Forbes Magazine. April 30 2012. Web. March 4 2016