Social Media Synthesis Essay

754 Words2 Pages

Brooks (2015) states that social media negatively affects efficiency and well-being. The participants took a survey to find out how much different types of social media affects users and how much time is being spent on them. Brooks (2015) explains that social media usage creates lower task performance, increased technostress, and lower happiness levels. Technostress is a stress or negative impact that technology has on you whether it be not being able to work your technology or not understanding the information. They often breathe heavily and will feel as if they are out of control. Having high levels of stress causes people’s happiness to decrease. Many people use user generated content (UGC), online content that people have created, such …show more content…

It will always have a negative effect on individuals, no matter how good they think they are at multitasking. Once people get distracted from something they lose the cues and information that is in their head. By losing the cues information it will never make it to users working memory, create stress, and make it hard to concentrate and process information. Too much information will get rid of the important information that they actually need to know. Distractions are caused by sound and sight. Sound is a distraction by having notifications when someone likes your picture, requests you, or messages you. It also distracts people by sight because if you see that someone posted a picture, updated their status, or that they are online it will cause social media users to be distracted even more. Brooks (2015) mentions that being distracted consists of three steps: “(1) others are distracting, (2) distraction can lead to attentional conflict, and (3) attentional conflict elevates drive” (p.27). This means that they will have an impaired performance in whichever situation they are in currently in and it will cause individuals to be stressed when they don’t remember what people are telling …show more content…

Social media affects people externally by not giving their full attention and also giving a lower task performance. People get distracted and information that is heard from one ear goes out the other. Brooks (2015) explains that people may think they can multitask, but they won’t be able to achieve it. Individuals forget information that is being said to them when they are distracted by being focused on their phones. The cue’s information will get lost and it will not be able to make it into your working memory. It affects people internally by giving you stress which will have a negative effect on your mood. Many social media users aren’t aware of the negative impacts that it can have on

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