Social media has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. At this point, you’d be hard pressed to find someone in almost any group without a social media presence. Many people prefer it to other forms of media, because of its reach, accessibility & interactivity (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018)). Social media has a ton of positive factors, which are regularly studied and talked about, such as better engagement opportunities (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018). Young people regularly use social media to interact with their friends, share opinions, memes and pictures etc. However, there is another side of social media use that is not talked about or researched nearly enough. This is the dark side of social media.
When we talk about the dark side, we mean the negative uses of social media. These include, but are not limited to cyberbullying, trolling, fake news, stalking and privacy issues (Baccarella, Wagner, Kietzmann, McCarthy 2018). These things are becoming more prominent in social media use and yet people still use it just as frequently. They post pictures without consent, they take part in arguments and trolling people, they read articles and believe it without a reputable source, et cetera. Social media can be a great source for networking and connecting with your friends, but at the same time, it can be a cesspool for bad things.
Something else that’s really concerning to me, is that there seems to be an increase of adolescents using social media. When Facebook first came out, it was for college aged adults. As time went on, people started lying about their age and making Facebook profiles, which lead to younger and younger people using it. Nowadays, we have similar instances with children using Snapchat, Tik Tok and other social media platforms. With all the negative aspects of social media, this is a scary thought. I guess a lot of people don’t really think about those things. We know it happens, but we don’t think it would happen to us or it’s not as big a deal as it actually is.
Social media is a really awesome tool that can be used in so many positive ways. But, people NEED to consider the negative aspects to it as well. People should think about the consequences of the things they post or read on social media. Most importantly, we need to talk about these issues. We need to talk to our peers and our kids and our coworkers. As long as we talk about it, we can avoid these issues from surfacing.
Reference
Baccarella, C. V., Wagner, T. F., Keitzmann, J. H., & McCarthy, I. P. (2018). Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media. European Management Journal, 36(4), 431–438.