“The Good and the Bad: How Social Media Affected Me as a Gen Z Individual”
In recent years the growing success of social media has led to being the source of information on major events. It has improved from the very original purpose of it. The emergence of social media way back in the early 2000s was mainly to connect and for communications during this period that Gen Z was born. They may not be the first one to use social media, but it grew with the availability of social media, so the bond of social media to Gen Z was strong and will get stronger in the future. Social media has helped Gen Z in a lot of ways. One thing why teens generally had a more positive view of social media is that they see it as a way to connect with their family and friends and a more diverse group of people. Social Media has been part of every millennial's life, especially when in terms of education. It has a great contribution to us as living individuals nowadays. As time passes by the existence of Social Media has made considerable changes in society. However, it has a major effect on people in the modern era. Somehow social media consumes a lot of time when we are using it, and in result instead of doing tasks, homework, assignments we forget that we have a lot of work to do.
The rise of Social Media is a beneficiary event to us mankind, our current and future generations will be more inclined to technology so as to social media, because of how it caught our attention and interests. These certain inventions entertained us as to the extent that we got addicted to it. Social Media made our lives easier, the communication and sharing of information is more faster and accessible than the traditional ways, and that's why social media became popular because of the advantages of its functions. Social Media became more prominent with our lives as this helps us communicate easier, specially during this pandemic, we are prohibited to communicate personally with our friends and loved ones, social media has its uses to make those tasks possible. Through social media, we are able to communicate and interact with people we know and people we love. But despite its uses, there are certain bad effects to the usage of social media.
The rise of social media means that there are various people joining the community. People that are insensitive, negative and manipulative. With the various people out there, it is uncertain whether they are a good person or not. Chances of being manipulated by their information is high. It is more preferable to have enough knowledge about the contents and the users of social media to execute our chance of being a victim by those. Using social media has cognitive effects on us mankind, the anxiety caused by the information we get or the stress feeling from a specific post or message of a person can cause us harm. There are many cases of mental health issues caused by consuming social media, certain traumas being experienced by several users are happening. Using too much social media is not a good idea, too much exposure of information and communication could lead us to addiction and information overload which is a very risky psychological issue for us.
In using social media it got to the point where it manipulated the users where every decision they make is predicted by an algorithm. Social media has also caused chaos towards individuals where they are divided for the reason of different opinions and beliefs brainwashed by false information creating conflict and making a gap to citizens when it comes to politics. Some even took it too far by believing that the corona virus is not real and the government is just making it as a diversion to take our attention away from the real problem. It caused depression and anxiety to teens due to cyberbullying and also creating impossible standards towards beauty where they think that they need to meet the expectations of others to be cool. It caused mental problems and even physical problems due to high exposure of radiation for the reason that they have been staring at their phones for a long time. The good effect of social media to me as a Gen z individual is I am able to access the latest news and information that I want. I can make friends and talk to them easily. It enables me to connect and communicate to different sides of the world. It helps Me to communicate with loved ones wherever they are. I can gather news and information faster than before. Hence all things are good but with moderation.











