Social Media: The Death of Real World Interaction

861 Words2 Pages

“If Facebook was a country, it’d be larger than China in three years.” (McMillan) The amount of people using this single website alone, out of the hundreds of social media on the Internet, has overtaken the entire population of the United States long ago. There are vast amounts of people scattered around the globe taking part in the use of social media. Although a very large part of the population uses it regularly, there are still many negative elements about it. Such include the blossoming of unreliable news, privacy concerns and the decline in happiness within the people. Social media sites cause more harm than good in today’s society due to the instigation of afflictions in health and daily life. As a starting point, social media has proven to be a very strong resource for a fast way to spread news, but has enabled users to broadcast unreliable and blatantly false information. During the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s havoc, Shashank Tripathi, a New York City hedge fund analyst, “tweeted” a series of false updates. “…that began with ‘BREAKING’…One said that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded. Another said that power company Con Ed would cut off service to all of Manhattan.” (Laird) The messages spread like wildfire, and were even reported on by national media. The offensive updates just added to the confusion and chaos in the wake of the hurricane’s wrath. The fact of the matter leads to a shocking realization: In what other situations could this occur? The false information could lead to monetary losses and to even lives. A possible reason information, even false, can spread so fast is due to the interest of the people. In Shashank Tripathi’s case, the tweets written by him revealed shocking revelations t... ... middle of paper ... ...d theft have been on the rise due to the prevalence of posts revealing one’s whereabouts. Social networking in itself has also resulted in the decrease of users’ happiness and may even cause various implications in life. Consequently, this clearly shows that social media has much room to improve before the positives outweigh the negatives. Works Cited Chang, Catherine. The Student Life. 26 April 2013. Document. 23 October 2013. Konnikova, Maria. New Yorker. 10 September 2013. Document. 23 October 2013. Laird, Sam. Mashable. 30 October 2012. Document. 23 October 2013. Marche, Stephen. The Atlantic. 2 April 2012. Document. 23 October 2013. McMillan, Graeme. Digital Trends. 6 February 2013. Document. 23 October 2013. Reports, Consumer. Consumer Reports. June 2012. Document. 23 October 2013. Topping, Alexandra. The Guardian. 1 February 2012. Document. 23 October 2013.

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