The Popularization Of Digital Media And Social Media

In this day of age people rely on all sorts of face-to-face communication that ultimately diminish because of these new social technologies. These questions are ones that many researchers have found extremely intriguing since the popularization of social media in the last decade. Within this topic, social competency is an important ideal that most people strive towards, but there is evidence to support the claims that social media is actually harming people’s ability to interact competently in an offline setting. Studies on the social competency of youths who spend much of their time on social media networks are sometimes very conflicting. For example, a study executed by the National Institute of Health found that youths with strong, positive face-to-face relationships may be those most frequently using social media as an additional venue to interact with their peers. Additionally, a large amount of people decide to use social media as an extra outlet to interact with their friends,

The Cyber World exists parallel to our physical reality in that the Internet, television, video games, and cell phones all play a role in shaping who we are as individuals existing together outside of technology. Experts say digital media helps us because it may enhance time management skills; increase productivity or social interactions; and may even improve optimism and self-esteem, as well as general knowledge. However, Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, claims that social media is a metaphor for real life. We think it might change our lives for the better, make it easier, make us happier… but we all know what they say: you can’t buy happiness. Well, social media comes with a cost. I want to argue that too much of it can become a problem where we are no longer helping ourselves, but where we are beginning to become handicapped by changing our relationships with society and perhaps even our evolutionary