Social Media Enslaves People, Essay Example

As far back as most people remember, social media was a much a real concept as ghosts haunting bathrooms at Walmart. People were connecting through family gatherings, Sunday dinners, family reunions and family bonding; there was not a single thing about social media that threatened families and friendships not to mention relationships. Ever since social media came to exist, people have used it in every way possible and in a lot of ways, it can be said that social media enslaves people. There are a lot of evidence to support this fact, there has been situations where people have used social media to make bad things happen to people; things that people wouldn’t have believed were possibly 10+ years ago. It can be argued that social media isn’t the monster that some people perceive it to be, but the person who’s using social media to do the things that they are doing; it can range from sending a message about picking up milk from spending too much time being obsessed with the amount of likes that one gets. Some social media users will argue that social media is the greatest technological invention in existence, not a lot of people will argue that social media brings people together. However, because there are so many people on social media, people are letting themselves become slaves to the social media that they are using whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. Impressionable youths are at a point in their lives where social media is their whole world, but it can’t be argued that social media is responsible for turning an entire generation into continuous monitors of social media. While social media is responsible for “bringing” people together, it is also putting some people at a distance; some people find that they communicate less with people that they know in real life than if they were to do it on social media. Social media can’t be an alternative source to family because even though people require interaction to survive, social media can be held responsible for that interaction, it has made people slaves to it and current generations have come to the conclusion that social media rules people, it does.

Now, it can be argued that social media enslaving people stems from a current trend that has caused several problems to people and families across the world. One of the problems that social media is causing is that it is enslaving people to the point where they are being driven to put their entire lives on social media to be graded and judged by their peers, there are too many people who center their whole lives on the attention they get from social media because it is the only thing that matters right now. Uniquely, there are a mass amount of people who miss out on the finer elements of life because they are constantly on their phones, computers, tablets and anything else they can access social media from that’ll allow them to access their personal page or another person’s page. According to Rodrigues (2012), “even though social media has divided people and families, it is still the progenitor responsible for helping kids in low income families  learn how to properly use a computer” (Rodrigues, 2012). There are a lot of families that do not even spend time together anymore because the younger members of the family are more concerned about spending time on their social media site trying to keep up with the latest trends, who’s going out with who and how many likes their status got that day. Family togetherness has taken a backseat to social media to the point where families aren’t even acknowledging each other and taking time to be there for one another except on Instagram. Case in point, Sidney Cailor is a high school freshman. Sidney is all about Facebook and keeping up with her status and the likes she gets on her status. Well, Sidney’s older sister Jordana, whose is a freshman in college, is also on Facebook and make it her life’s work to monitor her page constantly. Sidney and Jordana’s father, Walter, is planning a family camping trip in the woods; Sid and Jordana don’t want to go. Sidney doesn’t want to go since she can’t take her Instagram and Facebook accounts with her, Jordana is open to the camping trip as long as she can at least take her phone; their father forbid it. Social Media has made slaves out of family members to the point where family comes second.

The second problem with social media enslaving people is that it has created monsters and bullies as well as bullying problems from which some people don’t recover, concerned parents will be the first to mention social media is the source of the bullying that has been going on of late. However, people that use social media for bullying and creating a source of social control are the real monsters because the social control has pushed some people as well as youths to the edge where they are facing ridicule, bullying, getting ostracized and being forced to live outside of the social circle as an outcast. Case in point, Jessica is a middle school girl whose dream is to be the leader of the popular kids at her school. But, Jessica is not a part of the popular crowd because of a girl named Destiny; the current leader of the group of popular kids. Jessica and Destiny have a Facebook page, but because Jessica is lacking pictures of popular R & B artists as well as the boy she likes; she is constantly denied entry into the popular group. In fact, Destiny has told all of her friends on Facebook that Jessica is a phony with no life, Jessica is ostracized at school and is forced to eat lunch all by herself. According to Zuckerman (2012), “social media was created for the purpose of possibly bringing together family that don’t get to talk to each other often, it’s not supposed to be used to divide and destroy us but that’s what today’s generation is using it for” (Zuckerman, 2012). The final thing that is wrong with social media enslaving people is that now that adults are creating profiles on social media, they are just as capable of becoming everything that they chide children for; there has been cases where adults are now just as obsessed with social media than their kids. Overall, social media has enslaved people, created monsters of vanity, exerted social control over people both young and old, turned friends into bitter enemies and completely obliterated the concept of family time or family togetherness. It is not arguable that social media has divided families but what is arguable is how many people this epidemic affected, families are at the mercy of social media and no one is doing anything about it.

In conclusion, social media has enslaved people to the point where there is hardly anyone in any family socializing unless they are forced to. Parents having to compete for their children’s attention when it comes to being asked to do something because the children are obsessed with who is their friend on Facebook and who accepted their friend request, social media is calling the shots as far as who is doing what to who. People have allowed social media to rule them and be the decider of who is cool and who is not, it has also made bullying an even bigger issue on a wide scale because certain people are forced to dictate their lives based on who thinks highly of them. Two decades ago, all a person needed to do to see how someone was doing was to pick up the phone and call them whether it was a friend or a relative; creating that loving family environment was everything to past generations. Now, those from past generations are watching the current generation use social media to turn them against their peers and watch friendships as well as relationships dissolve like a medicinal tablet in a glass of water. Social media has also been used to drive couples and marriages apart never mind the fact that it is now the only way that some people will communicate, it can be said that some people are not as big a slave to social media than the stats might suggest but there has been more people using social media to communicate than using it to gain social control over the masses or using it as a bullying tool to make someone feel bad about themselves. The worst part of all is that people have social media on their devices and because they do, their device has become a part of them as well as who they are. More and more people are being identified as continuous users of social media, people are letting their lives be ruled by social media because that is the trend that’s hot right now and it has made some people feel that if they don’t have a Facebook or Instagram then they’re not worth the attention. People need to wake up and realize that there’s more to life than social media as well as the number of friends you have on it.

References

Rodrigues, A. (2012, December 10). Social Media Unites Us or Divides Us? Retrieved November 3, 2015, from https://prezi.com/wfv-hll0fvr8/social-media-unites-us-or-divides-us/

Zuckerman, E. (2010, August 3). Does Facebook unite us or divide us? Retrieved November 3, 2015, from http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/03/zuckerman.facebook.global/