Everything we use in our daily life has positive and negative aspects. For example, vegetables are considered healthy and good for the human body, but they start to work as poison when they are consumed too much.
The same rule goes for social media, nowadays everyone we know is on social media, and there is a whole new digital world living inside our phones and laptops,
Where it has some great positive effects on our lives, it can be pretty dangerous when you become its victim.
Let’s discuss how social media has affected the lives of students in a good and a bad way.
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10 Disadvantages of Social Media for Students
1. Social Media Bullying/Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying became a considerable disadvantage of social media as it entered our country. The reason for this aspect is that social media became a pretty trendy thing to use without any cyber literacy or cyber laws. So it became effortless to manipulate someone’s privacy.
The biggest problem that we faced was that there was no elder supervision as we were the first generation to deal with stuff like cyberbullying, but luckily it was controlled to a larger extent when cyber laws were activated throughout the nation.
2. Isolation (more time indoor)
Social media lets us connect to millions of people worldwide, but it also tends to keep us away from whom we are practically close with, which would be our parents and siblings.
As everyone in the family is on social media, they all want to keep up with the world matters, which causes quite a lot of negligence in the issues that need your attention.
3. Peer Comparisons
Peer pressure wasn’t known to me till it made me watch all the seasons of game of thrones, even though I hated bloodshed. That’s when it hit me.
We are living lives for others just to keep a face with people who don’t even care about us.
This also has a massive impact on the self-esteem of youth. Here’s how I see it.
When you can’t find someone with the same interest as yours you tend to join up the wrong group and not having the same interest and skills impacts negatively on your Self Esteem. You’ll start to feel like your thoughts and ideas are not worthy enough to share.
4. Privacy problems
As discussed earlier, the young generations start being active on every social media platform without realizing the consequences of being public all the time.
With the public check-ins on Facebook, constant life updates on Instagram, it’s really easy for the foes to harm them because they are putting up all of their information to the public.
Around 2009 it was a huge disaster when pictures of girls were photoshopped, and then they were blackmailed for them. This spread like a huge roaring fire across the whole country, but luckily within two years, cyber laws and sanctions were introduced, which put an end to it.
|Related: Disadvantages of Internet for students and Solution?
5. Lack emotional connection
Lack of emotional connection or lack of connecting to yourself is a huge drawback of social media.
Let’s get this straight: many people saying good or bad stuff on social media don’t have the guts to say it in public practice or face-to-face.
This creates a huge misconception of how humanity is or how people are. When we go through comment sections of posts, there will be a vast majority spreading violence and negativity ( which, by the way, makes the world look a lot scarier than it is).
Now, as far as connecting to ourselves is concerned, we tend to find ourselves, role models. As we spend more time on social media, we follow them without realizing the reality of our nature.
In easy words, our reality seems to change with what’s trending, and as the trends are not in our control, this can be a huge problem because, with the circling trend, the youth is left with zero personality and character.
I know it’s not what the youth wants to hear, but to get a solid personality and character, stop looking for in your phones but books instead, believe me, you won’t regret it.
6. It changes lifestyle habits, and it is sleep disruption
Do you know that more than 50% of diseases are caused by lack of sleep one way or another? I’m not going to lecture you about the benefits of a good night’s sleep, but those mighty 7-8 hours of sleep at night is the time when our body repairs its damages, damaged eye cells, damaged neurons, damaged muscles, etc. If we don’t give our body that time, it is more likely to get sick a lot.
The constant up to keep with social media has shifted the focus off from our bodies. It might seem boring, but we need to focus on ourselves at this age, plan our life, focus on our skills, focus on what’s important. All of these tasks need time. How are we going to get time if we are surfing the internet the second, we get free?
Don’t even get me started on the damage that the blue light does to our eyes.
7. It gets addicting
Duh, Stating the obvious.
I won’t say so much about this point, just an example that we all are familiar with.
Remember that mouse or ginny pig we used to study about who used to run on a wheel to get treats. After completing 20 cycles, he used to get a single treat.
Dude, that’s us. We scroll around for hours looking for time-worthy memes or videos. I know I do. And this made me realized there is no freaking difference between that mouse and me.
8. It can bring unwanted attention
The social media influencers vary age-wise. From 6-26, every person can be a social media influencer. But not all of them want to welcome harassment through DM or Comment section. But it still happens. Many cases are going on about child predators reaching out to youngsters, which is scary to think about since children are easily manipulated.
9. Lack of control for inappropriate content
With full access to every kind of website and social media platform added zero adult guidance, the generations come across a lot of content. Not all of the threat is appropriate to their age or values of a society or a community.
Exposure to inappropriate stuff slowly makes them a norm, and that’s why we should be worried about this issue.
10. Relying on social media for all contact
This is the biggest drawback of all time. We have no idea how to deal with people practically.
There is a whole world outside the mobile screen and chatbox. When we enter there, we kind of lose it because we don’t practice proper communication nowadays. Now you might think what’s so wrong about that. Well, a lot of things, to start with, we are getting kind of dumb when it comes to reading social cues.
10 Advantages of Social Media for Students
With loads of disadvantages, there are pretty good advantages of social media for students, that can help them a lot while they brace towards their future.
Let’s find out.
1. Social media helps to connect like-minded people
Most of the time, in the practical world, some of us seem to have trouble connecting to our colleagues, family’s cousins, etc. there can be many reasons for that, but social media platforms have provided the perfect solution for that.
We can meet people online and make new friends, friends who have the same interest as us.
Fair warning; We also have to look out for child predators because not every nice person online can be our good wisher.
2. Video conferencing abilities
Video conferencing has made this quarantine a lot much easier. You can conduct meetings for your start-ups, projects, school, and so much more.
3. Social media is good for their Education
There are many things that social media has taught us that books can’t and do you know why, because a book cannot be updated every single second, on the other hand, social media updates are life changers.
You can keep up with the world through Twitter trends, unlike the old days in which people used to wait for newspapers.
4. Source of motivation
It’s a good source of motivation also if you know where to look for it. When I started writing blogs, I didn’t know how much I can do with them. There were some groups on Facebook in which people shared their success stories that changed my life.
5. Social media enhances creativity
The DIY and hack videos are just to start with. There is a lot of stuff on these social media platforms that’ll enhance your creative techniques and skills.
There is a lot to learn from the world, and social media is the only place for that right now.
6. It lets us share anything with others
When you scroll down the comment section, you can share your opinions and see a situation from a whole new perspective. Believe me, if you keep an open mind, it’s a life-changer.
7. It makes them think more
Okay, so, let’s say that somebody shared something inappropriate, he is bashed and trolled around the internet. This sends a message to the whole community, and from then and onwards, people will think about whatever they are going to post.
That’s how racism and sexism are coming to an end. It’s a way to make the world a better place if we all play a good role in it.
8. Built a brand reputation
You can build a brand reputation if the brand satisfies a seller. Nothing spreads faster than words or reviews of a happy customer.
Social media is providing a lot of space and opportunities to build up a brand reputation.
Before that, the only place to advertise was billboards and television. And be honest, it was pretty expensive.
Now the youth have a business mindset, and social media plays a significant role in helping them out.
9. It is used for professional growth
Professional growth was never so easier as it is now. We have tons of youtube channels, Facebook pages, and Instagram influencers who help us by sharing their techniques and skills to polish our professional skills and modify our personalities in a good way.
10. Used for entertainment
After a long hard day, it’s the cheapest option for entertainment. To forget all of your troubles, sit back and relax.
The Final Verdict:
So here are some of the major advantages and disadvantages of social media for the young generation.
Although the disadvantages may seem dangerous but social media is the need f this time and forward. All we need to do is educate the generations on how they can avoid horrible circumstances and use these platforms for their personal growth.
Do read about the advantages and disadvantages of Social media on Youth.
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