Social media had taken a huge part of people lives. These impacts are huge enough to cause positivity and negativity to human emotions. And how did social media gain so much power to it?
Accessibility
Firstly, let’s talk about the accessibility to social media in our current digital age. As long as you have a smartphone with you it is as simple as a single touch on the screen. In year 2020, more than 90% of the population in Singapore owned a smartphone as the number of smartphone users has raised to 4.65 million (Muller, 2020) and according to data in January 2020, 4.6 million Singaporean out of 4.65 million smartphone users were active social media users. (Fairuze, 2020)
Communication
Secondly, human interaction causes by social media. Human interaction before social media might be just meet up and talk face to face or phone calls, however with social media, people tends to express their feelings on the social media platform to show others, for example Instagram stories (Summer, 2019). And after it became a habit, people constantly check on their social media to check on their friends instead of the traditional way. For instant, there’s a quote saying, “Phone will eat first before us”. For example, when people go to some nice cafes for a meal, they will usually want to post on social media to “show off”, therefore willing to spend the first 5 minutes to take photos/videos and think of what captions to post online when their friends are just beside them.
Emotion
Thirdly, how did social media affect human emotions? With the time spend on social medias platform, people tend to portray the best of themselves to show others online. However, these will led to emotion breakdown when you start comparing yourself and others. (Davki, 2018) Moreover, cyber-bullying is everywhere online now, users can create as many accounts they want just to talk bad about you and it is easy to manipulate fake news online and people will choose to believe it. These will cause discomfort and worst, depression and led to suicide. For example, a popular Netflix series; Terrace House cast decided to end her life at the age of 22 due to cyber-bullying few months back. (Bahati, 2017)
Conclusion
There are always Pros and Cons, same goes for social media. However, i felt that we should raise our awareness on the cons on what can social media affect people lives such as communication issues and cyber-bullying.
What do you guys think? Feel free to leave me a comment and let me know how social media impact your lives. Good day.
Dann Chia (S3771847) Digital Marketing Blog 
Hi Dann,
Very insightful post! Social media has become a double-edge sword. On one side, it benefits us by improving communication and interaction. On the other side, it has become the heaven for keyword warriors and people to leave nasty comments and opinions. As such, cyber bullying has become so prevalent in this digital age, with many celebrities and people succumbing to cyber bullying pressure. How do you think we can educate on the younger generation to prevent cyber bullying and misuse of social media?
LikeLike
Thank you for reading Gen!
Cyberbullying is always there as long as the internet is still around. However, I felt that there are a few measures that can be taken into consideration to prevent cyberbullying from happening. According to trends, the younger generation always chooses a role model and follows them in every way such as celebrities. Celebrities can share posts that against cyberbullying and discourage keyboard warriors to comment on unnecessary things that ruin people lives.
LikeLike
Hi Dann!
Interesting read and insights on how social media can bring negative effects to us as consumers. It definitely has changed the landscape of consumers interacting and has also made it easier to be connected and staying up to date with your peers. With the prevalence of social media allowing us to meet new people, I can’t help but to think that we’re always comparing what we have against what we see online!
Having said that, I agree that it can definitely take a toll on one’s mental health and bring about negative emotions. Do you think that it would be useful for these social media platforms to constantly promote the rising concerns of mental health awareness?
LikeLike
Thank you for reading Siraj!
I felt that humans always think that the “other side of the grass is greener” and never appreciate what they have until they lose it. Being said that, I agree with you that it would be useful to promote the rising concerns of mental health awareness through social media platforms as social media platforms have one of the biggest influential rate.
LikeLike