How Social Media Played a Big Role in Making People More Isolated

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Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of data, ideas, career interests, and other sorts of expression via virtual communities and networks. It is nowadays everywhere, with Facebook pioneering the idea, the use of social media all across the world has sky-rocketed. As of 2017, an estimated 1.96 billion people use social media and that number is projected to go up to 2.5 billion by 2025. Experts have been raising awareness of ethical issues concerning social media and its usage. Some studies even concluded that it correlates with perceived social isolation.

Social media creates a dopamine-driven feedback loop to condition young adults to stay online, stripping them of important social skills and further keeping them on social media, leading them to feel socially isolated. Feedback loops are a key aspect of social media. It is why social media websites are extremely popular nowadays. They have learned to take advantage of the human psyche and its reward systems. The dopamine-driven feedback loops promote short bursts of happiness that trick users into feeling happy when in reality they ruin the mood and mental health. Dr. Brian A. Primack, a dean at the University of Pittsburgh Honors College wrote a research paper targeting academics that set out to identify the correlation between social media usage (SMU) and perceived social isolation (PSI). What he found was that when it came to SMU, a higher length and frequency correlated with higher PSI. Hence, indicating people with Social Media addiction are becoming more isolated.

Social media was brought into existence to make communication easier across long distances through the fast transmission of messages and calls. However, now it has mostly proven itself to be a force of evil rather than good. The creators of social media would rather people waste their life away on their site, collecting their information, selling it, and earning profit instead of being the way to communicate with loved ones. They keep people in their system through exploiting vulnerabilities in the human psyche and keeping users feeling empty, isolated, and miserable in the long term. They entice people with the promise of free communication, the power to show everyone the special moments in life, and therefore the promise that anyone can leave at any point, but the fact that they use these psychological tactics to keep users scrolling questions the ethics of these websites.

Social Media impacts mental health as most of the users get lazy because of the excessive use of social networks which in result brings disorder in our routine life. Instead of having physical meet-ups, they prefer to have a video call with their friends and family. Due to which the virtual world devours the mind of users and most of the dependent users of communication technology die.

On social media applications, personal data can easily be hacked and shared on the Internet. Several personal Facebook and Instagram accounts can be hacked and the hacker can post materials that have affected the individual’s personal lives. This is one of the reasons people on social media prefer to stay away from strangers and even friends. Hence, making them more isolated.

Social Media has increased communication over the past decade; however, it has impacted the daily lives of people making them feel more isolated, having mismanaged routines, and decreasing physical meet-ups.

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