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Ariana Isakson

College Prep Writing

Cause and Effect

November 8, 2017

Effects of Social Media on Society

The use of social media has progressed through the years and has allowed many people to

connect in a whole new way. However, with such a powerful tool at most people's disposal has

been known to cause a slew of problems. Social media has been known to cause addiction,

depression, and has also been the reason that some individuals have lost their jobs. The internet

is such a powerful tool that it may be causing more harm than good.

Social media has been used for years, and has recently become very popular in younger

individuals. On average, people between the age of 16 and 24 spend 164 minutes a day on social

media. Social media has had a way of revolutionizing how people view themselves, and

consequently, many of the users on social media end up comparing themselves to other people

they see online (Shellabarger). As a result, many mental disorders have been linked to the

excessive use of social media and include anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive

disorder. In one article, the individual stated that she ended up feeling more confident about

herself with the more likes she gained. Many other individuals also believe that their self-worth

is tied to how many liked, retweets, or publishes they gain on a post (Ta).

Many experts have also agreed that excessive internet use may lead to an addiction.

Addiction criteria includes neglect from personal life, mental preoccupation, escapism, and mood

modifying experiences which appear to be present in individuals who use social media in

excessive amounts. Another study showed that people who stopped using social media even went
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through withdrawals and experienced phycological effects. Other studies have also shown that

people who tend to use social media on a day to day basis tend to be sadder and have greater

feelings of social isolation (Pantic).

A great deal of millennials use social media as a place where they can express themselves

and escape from problems they may be going through. This can be viewed as a good and a bad

thing because it allows people to have an outlet for their anger and other problems that they may

be going through in their life, but it also pulls them from the reality around them into a world

where everyone is talking or arguing behind the comfort of a screen. Not having face to face

contact may cause adolescents to become less connected to the world around them. It also can

take away the focus from other tasks that may need to be done (Walton).

Social media can also affect an individual's ability to obtain a job. Numerous amounts of

companies are using social media to filter applicants for a job. They are looking to judge the

suitability of the applicant with the company. Many posts made by teenagers affect their ability

to obtain jobs later in life such as images of underage drinking, posts about past employers, and

posts about customers and may cause the company to not hire someone no matter how qualified

they seem for the job (Reyes). However, companies may also throw applications aside if they

have nothing at all on their social media. For instance, a company might google an applicant to

see how they have helped in their community or past accomplishments, but if nothing shows up

about the applicant they may just throw the application away. Companies have also been known

to fire employees because they found out that their employee was using internet for non-work

purposes (Reyes).

In one instance that social media can cause major problems in the work place is the

instance with the teacher from West Fargo, North Dakota. The North Dakota teacher was a
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special education teacher and mostly worked with autistic students. She also ran for Miss

Montana on a special education platform, but somehow some tweets that she had posted came

into light because parents of the students had seen them. In one tweet she wrote "Writing an

essay about autistic students and accidently put monsters instead of mothers #samething" (Ross).

There were over five pages of tweets that the parents printed off and showed to the school. Her

twitter profile had been public which allowed anyone who knew her name to see her posts. The

whole situation caused a great deal of chaos and became an investigation within the school

(Ross).

Social media has become a very large part of most people's lives. It has allowed people

from all over the world to connect with each other in many different ways; however, because

social media is such a powerful tool it tends to take over peoples' lives and can cause more harm

than benefits. Since social media has become so popularized over the years and has also shown

that it can also be a curse as well as a blessing there are a few things that can help contribute to

lessening the negative impacts that it sometimes has. Limiting social media usage can help in the

sense that less people would be online to cause problems, adjusting privacy settings can also

control who sees posts can help as well, and the last solution would be to keep private life private

so that information being shared with the cyber population is limited.


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Works Cited

Pantic, Igor. Online Social Networking and Mental Health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and

Social Networking, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 1 Oct. 2014,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/.

Reyes, Alissa. Social Media Can Impact Future Employment. The California Aggie, 14 Feb.

2014, theaggie.org/2014/02/14/social-media-can-impact-future-employment/.

Ross, Catherine. West Fargo Teacher under Fire for Offensive Tweets. Inforum, Forum

Communications Company, 7 Apr. 2017, www.inforum.com/news/4247724-west-fargo-

teacher-under-fire-offensive-tweets.

Ta, Jenny Q. What Impact Has Social Media Truly Had On Society. Business 2 Community,

13 Aug. 2014, www.business2community.com/social-media/impact-social-media-truly-

society-0974685#YWMGLCzJHkIiZ2vW.97

Walton, Alice G. 6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health. Forbes, Forbes Magazine,

3 Oct. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-

medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#8a627a52e5af.

Shellabarger, RuthAnne. Social Media's Impact On Society. The Odyssey Online, 8 Nov.

2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/social-medias-impact-society.

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