The Negative Impacts of Overusing Social Media

Ruoye Yang 201932079

These days young people seems to feel like it’s so hard to live without social media and

usually they reach their phones for more than one hundred times one day or even hold their

phones in their hand forever. Sometimes they check important messages from families or go

through official news, while most of the time they just watch funny videos like a dog is

dancing to music or see the influencers they followed just newly posted a glamorous picture

of trip in France. Though social media is a good resource for students to receive all kinds of

information and fun, we should not deny these social media is bringing some disadvantages

to students’ daily life, like damaging their family relationships, misleading personal value and

resulting in internet bullying.

Students who are lack of self-discipline can ignore the school tasks and family activities

because of addicting to social media. If a student spends too much time on it at school, for

example when the math teacher is giving a lesson while the student is chatting with his

friends about where to hang out this weekend or checking what messages his favorite singer

just sent on Twitter, he will miss a lot of knowledge points of this subject and then receive a

low score in the exam. Besides, if a student takes out his phone out as soon as they arrive

home and fall in the sofa, they will not be willing to talk with their parents and play with their

brothers or sisters. As time passes, families may complain about their low grade at school and

cold attitude at home which could result in family arguments or endless silence at home.

Information posted by some internet celebrities can influence students’ mood and value in

a negative way. On Instagram there are always a group of people and it looks that that they

don’t have to study or work, instead, all they do is traveling around the world and posting
amazing pictures of their luxury cars and perfect figure on their personal pages. Besides,

super models with gorgeous outfit always show their followers how trendy they are and how

perfect their bodies are. Normal students can be envious of these and girls maybe try so hard

to lose weight for a slim figure. If they go too far and adopt unhealthy and extreme eating

habits to lose weight, diseases like malnutrition and anorexia will come to them. The truth is,

everyone is unique and perfectly as whom they are, it’s not necessary for everyone to chase a

brilliant and unreal life like what other people are living.

Social media is a medium to spread rumors and should be blame for the bullying and

network violence. Internet users express their opinions about some issues merely based on

their subjective feelings without knowing all the facts and details. Especially students who

are not mature in mind make comments without scruple sometimes can easily hurt others.

The controversial TV serials 13 Reasons Why produced by Netflix showed the power of

social media to destroy a person. The main character Hanna Backer, who is a kind and warm-

hearted high school girl, committed suicide in the beginning of the story because of her

friends’ rude behavior and most importantly, unreal rumors about her spread among the

whole school. The fake and dirty gossips on social media bothered her so much and made her

feel so shameful and lost trust in everyone. She couldn’t bear these desperations and chose to

end up her life in the bathroom at home. Though it’s just a TV serials but true stories like

these happens all the time in our daily life. The more students use and rely on social media,

the more likely they are to be hurt by the virtual weapon.

In conclusion, social media is a double edge sword for people’s life, and for students,

overusing social media can be harmful to their life. Though social media has to be mainly

responsible for students’ wrong behavior both at home and school, bad influence towards

their values, and most seriously, the bullying problem, the truth is, it’s people’s mistake
because people do not use social media properly. Technology is quite neutral and what it

bring us really depend on in which way we use and what we use them for. Social media is

used for linking people and helping people know about the world, understand each other,

develop themselves better rather than used as a weapon to hurt people or build walls between

close relations.