Hill 1

Ryker Hill
Cris Longhurst
English 1010
10 April 2016
The Death of Human Interaction?

Like this! Post that! Tweet this! Pin that! Social media is a huge part of everyones
lives right now. Approximately 1.73 billion people or one third of the world use social media.
Most of us can agree that social media has had some sort of influence in our life, but in the end is
it social media doing more bad than good? Are people spending too much time on social media?
What negative effects do social media have on you? I believe social media ultimately has had a
negative effect on us; academically, socially, and mentally.

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Social Media and Communication

Social media was invented for the sole purpose of being able to express yourself online
and to be able to stay connected with those you care about. About 70% of communication is
through non-verbal signals, like hand motions, facial expressions, emotions, voice inflection, etc.
Can we express all of this through a post or message? The answer is simple, no we cant. People
might say that they can use emojis to express themselves, but in the end you dont get the same
benefit like a face to face conversation. Social media can be a great tool to stay in contact with
people, but have we taken it too far? When we hang out with friends we almost always talk
about what we saw on social media or say things like Did you see what Aaron posted on
Facebook? When hanging out does everyone look at their different social media apps?

1: Teenagers "hanging out"

Social media is the preferred method of communication among young people and more young
people are spending more time on it (Fowlkes). No matter what activity you do when you hang
out with your friends, you will eventually end up checking social media at least once. Most
teenagers have more than one social media, which increases the amount of time spent on social

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media. 92% of teens report going online daily. 71% of teens use more than one social
network site (Lenhart). There are countless different social media sites.

2. A typical teenager's phone with different social media apps

Negative Effects of Social Media on the Body
Social media has had negative effects on your body as well as your interactive skills.
Have you ever been doing something and you feel your phone vibrate but when you check it,
there was nothing there? This is known as phantom vibration syndrome, where you think your
phone goes off but it actually didnt. In one study about 89% of people said that they feel the
phantom vibration once every two weeks. Why do people experience phantom vibration
syndrome? The brain seems to have rewired itself so that when you have an itch, your brain
convinces itself its your phone vibrating. Because social media can give you immediate results
of happiness with little to no effort required your brain will desire to have this happiness more
and can actually cause your brain to crave social media, making it highly addictive. Social
media triggers your brain to release dopamine; the most addictive drugs increase your dopamine
activity which plays a factor in making social media so addictive.

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Social Media is a Distraction

Social media also plays a big role in distracting us from whats going on around us. At
work take a look around and see how many people are using their phones instead of working. At
James Madison University about 70% of students claimed that they were sometimes or
always on social media during class (Daniel). Whenever people get to a destination and have
time to kill, most of the time they will check their phones rather than socializing with people
around them. There have been numerous cases of car accidents that have occurred because the
driver was distracted by social media. Social media has even turned people into stalkers,
sociopaths, murderers, etc. As you can see, social media changes people in little and big ways.

3. A guy about to get in a car accident because he was using social media while driving
Does Social Media Have Any Good To It?

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There are some good aspects to social media; it is a very good tool to be able to stay in
contact with people all around the world. Social media is very good for finding out information
fast. But while it has its pros, there needs to be a line drawn. When social media becomes the
main source of communicating with others, it can be a big problem. You can get addicted, same
thing with being able to access information at incredible speeds, if youre not careful your body
will develop a constant craving for more new information.
What Can We Do?
People often think that they arent addicted to social media but go a day and tally how
many times you get on a social media site, the amount will surprise you. Social media is additive
and if were not careful we can fall victim to it. Social media only becomes a problem when we
allow it to take control of our lives. Do we go out and hang out with our friends to have fun, or
do we hang out with them so that we can post a new picture on social media? By limiting our
daily amount of time on social media we can drastically decrease the probability of us becoming
addicted to it. Even though social media was created with good intentions and has some good
things about it, ultimately it has had more negative effects on us than good. Because of the
prevalence and popularity of social media, our interpersonal communication skills are dying.
Will you allow social media to destroy your communication skills?

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Works Cited
Daniel, Naomi. The Downward Spiral for Cognitive and Social Skills. James Madison
University, 21 April 2015. Web. 27 March 2016
Lenhart, Amanda. Teens, Social Media, & Technology. Pew Research Center. 9 April
2012. Web. 10 April 2016.
Fowlkes, Jasmine. Why Social Media is Destroying our Social Skills USA TODAY.
October 11 2012. Web. March 5.
Tardanico, Susan. Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication Forbes Magazine.
April 30 2012. Web. March 4 2016