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Yoojin Bae
Professor Vincent Gilhooley
J039-2
26 May 2016
A New Drug, SNS
201222785 Yoo-Jin Bae

How long do you use a SNS every day? According to a report from KISDI, which is Korea
Information Society Development Institute, SNS users access the service for over 30 minutes a day
regardless of ages. An average SNS use time of people in 20s who spend their time online the most
than other ages is increasing from 63.1 to 80.7 minutes a day. (Joo 2016) There are interesting
statistics from a research team in Pittsburgh University in U.S. They studied an association between
SNS use and depression aimed at young people (19-32 years old) and found the more times they log
onto SNS the more there is high probability of feeling gloomy. Here is the question. Why can people
not stop using SNS? There are some reasons for SNS to have become so addictive. This essay will
show three of these reasons: the first one approaches a humans basic instinct, the second one is
related to attributes of our society and the last one is relevant to the traits of SNS
People, naturally, long for a desire of recognition from other people. First, Facebook users
can find themselves to stick to like buttons for their posting. They get enthusiastic about other
peoples attention. That is why some people write their opinions in a provocative way. The more
responses they get, the more they feel other people are paying attention to them. In addition, all
people have narcissism in their own way. It is extremely important for some people to care about how
other people think about them and how many friends they have. As the graph below means, SNS
addicts tendency to have giant self-illusion results in a SNS addiction. (Kim and Seo 595) what is
the worse is I like it made people fall under negative narcissism which means they only focus on
getting good feedbacks through a SNS. Not for a communication as the original purpose was intended.
SNS addicts are satisfying a want through making a good image in SNS. Furthermore, people,
normally, like to boast of their success and want to make their life look good. Everyone has each ones

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own hardships in their life. Nevertheless, people want to show others just a happy side of their time.
When they feel the gap between ideal lives and their realities is significantly different, they tend to
exaggerate small events not to lose the pleasure competition for show. (Joongang Daily, 2015) They
are getting more competitive to upload their pleasures.

Source: The Korean Journal of Health Psychology 20.3 (2015): 595

Next, our society is turning towards individualism more and more over time and people
increasingly tend to focus on their own lives. Above all, sadly, as the ideology develops, it is hard to
maintain friendships in person. Children do not play with their friends in a playground any more. SNS
became one of peoples play cultures. Without SNS, people feel easily isolated from others due to the
condition of this society. Because human beings are social animals, they try to keep connecting
someone else when they feel lonely in reality. As the graph below shows, SNS addiction tendency is
related to social support which is connected with loneliness and interpersonal relationships. (Kang,
128) Moreover, people are getting reluctant to open up and tell their story to other people in reality.
The reason is people are becoming accustomed to a unilateral communication as they use SNS. It
serves as the catalyst in that sense for this society to speed up individualism. In fact, some people
feel off-line meeting is tiresome in modern society. If they need to talk to other people, online is the

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best place to people who mind putting their energy meeting somebody. SNS is reflected by these
social backgrounds and has grown rapidly for less than a decade. As the result, people are relying on it
more and more.

Source: The Korea Journal of Sports Science 22.1 (2013): 128.

The last reason people fall in love with social network services itself because SNS is so
attractive that people can use it to escape from a harsh reality. In Korea, nobody believes womens
profile pictures for SNS. It has become a hot potato to people who are scheduled to a blind dating.
People can conceal who they are and some of them enjoy their fake profile in SNS. Not only their
appearance. They deny their real personality and amplify a hypothetical persona. (Flores, 47) Besides,
one of the main features of SNS is people have each ones account which means it can be fully their
own world under their control. They can fabricate the fact in their SNS postings and make a plausible
rumor without reasons or on purpose. They can be significantly powerful and at least in their postings
they are a king of the country. What is more, people feel powerful and famous when they have lots of
followers who check their writing regularly. Many people, in reality, believe what power bloggers write
without doubt and respect their opinions even though some of bloggers are not proven to be
professional of each posting. In SNS, people can be whoever they want, create whatever stories they

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want and even have influence on others in reality. What an incredible world!
To sum up, SNS is getting to be one of the biggest cultures in our world. It has various pros
and cons. The more popular it is, unfortunately, the more we are finding the disadvantages of it. As
this essay showed, even though it influences peoples life in negative manners, they cannot live
without SNS. There are three main reasons to make SNS one of the strong drugs. SNS meets peoples
craving for recognition and it fits to develop in our society because of individualism and SNSs traits. It
looks like a panacea for making peoples life better. In practice, SNS it just an oasis which looks like
solving peoples thirst. It can never be an ultimate remedy to nourish their lives.

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Works Cited
Flores, S. E. Facehooked. How Facebook Affects Our Emotions, Relationships, and Lives. Ed. Jinhee
An. Seoul: Book World, 2015. 41-59. Print
Jeong, K. H., Yoo, S, Y., Chae, W. K., Son, K. H., Cho, H. K. and Yoon, J. M. 3
1 SNS . http://gangnam.joins.com/news/article/Article.aspx?
total_id=18050104. Joongang daily. 18 June, 2015. Home ed.:14. Print
Joo, S. H. 50 SNS 30~40 58 . http://www.news1.kr/articles/?
2637870. News1. 18 April, 2016. Web. 11 May, 2016
Kang, H. W. A Study on the SNS addiction tendency of students and the relationship between
Perceived Social Support, Loneliness, Perceived Health Status, Interpersonal Relationship
and the Application of therapeutic recreation through physical activity. The Korea Journal of
Sports Science 22.1 (2013): 121-133. Print
Kim, S. M. and Seo, K. H. Relationships between Covert Narcissism and SNS Addiction Proneness:
Focus on the Mediating Effects of Experiential Avoidance The Korean Journal of Health
Psychology 20.3 (2015): 587-603. Print