Social media has many negative aspects

Hunter Lew, Staff Reporter

Social media has grown a lot over the years. It has become easily accessible to everyone. There are so many social media sites: Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Ask.fm, etc. These days it seems like everyone has a smart phone and is always on their phones. Social media makes it very easy to communicate with friends, share thoughts, photos, music, links, and more.

People are always checking their Facebook and Twitter accounts to see what people are posting. On these social media sites you are able to comment on people’s posts. This can be both good and bad. Sometimes the comments are positive, but other times the comments can be very negative. This is where cyber bullying comes into play.

According to statistics about 7 out of 10 young people are victims of cyber bullying. Some of the most common sites where cyber bullying happens are Facebook, Ask.FM, and Twitter because they are some of the highest in traffic of all social networks.

Cyber bullying has become a problem because people don’t realize the affects that it can have on a person. Cyber bullying has caused some individuals to think about or to attempt to commit suicide because they are not accepted by their peers.

Social media has many other negative aspects in addition to cyber bullying.

Students who are heavy social media users tend to have lower grades. Many students spend more time on their phones in school, blogging and checking people’s status than they do paying attention in class.

Using social media can harm job stability and employment opportunities. Many companies are able to check people’s social media sites because they want to see what kind of person they are hiring and what they do off the job. They want to know who is representing their company and what the public sees of them.

Social media causes people to spend less time interacting face-to-face. Rather than actually meeting up with someone, people spend most of their time interacting over social media sites. This causes our society to lack many social skills.