The Social Media Effect on People

In the current era of globalization, the development of technology and information has progressed very rapidly. The advancement of technology and information is a form of globalization and modernization produced by social changes that occur in society. This makes it easier for humans or someone to build networks and interact with others without limitation of distance and time. This progress supports the lives of the world community, including Indonesia. However, there are also detrimental effects of these social changes. Science and technology have brought many conveniences to our everyday lives, yet many people are concerned that life is changing too fast, the introduction of automobiles and advanced communications technology has weakened traditional attachments. One of their biggest reason why is the invention of social media and gadgets. Many people consider these gadgets to be a part of their lives, so wherever they often carry their gadget. Often our money runs out only to meet the needs of prestige.

Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. on the other hand. A gadget is a small tool such as a machine that has a particular function but is often thought of as a novelty. In 1978, the first social media was created. Bulletin Board System (BBS) was created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess used to announce the meeting and sharing information by posting it on BBS. It was the beginning of a virtual community and the first dial-up in history. As social media develops around the society, globalization also occurs through modernization. 

Modernization freed individuals from the small, tightly knit communities of the past. Most people in modern societies have the privacy and freedom to express their individuality. Unconsciously because of the modernization, in this case, social media has brought people into a new culture and started to affecting society’s behavior. Many people think social media is a part of overdone technology. Besides all the positiveness impact, numerous people believe it also has plenty of poor effects.

The existence of mass media in presenting information tends to trigger changes and has a lot of influence on people's lifestyle. Slowly but effectively, the social media shape how people see their own personality and how they should relate to the everyday world. Social media was started to facilitate people connecting with each other, but throughout the years in line with its development, many people started to misuse social media. [footnoteRef:5]Social media does have negative effects as well but are nothing compared to the advantages of using it. These sites reduce the amount of face to face socializing and replace it with online interaction which is believed to result in low-quality relationships with other people. Other issues that caused by social media are as cyber-bullying and “Facebook depression”. Nowadays people use social media to instilling hatred by using cursed words or uploading unethical pictures that emerged unhappiness and hatred towards someone.

Back in 2011, Dr. Daria Kuss from psychology today started research on how excessive social media use can impact negatively on health. It showed that social media use for a minority of individuals is associated with a number of psychological problems, including anxiety, depression, loneliness, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and addiction. Because social media is most frequently accessed via smartphones, their usage is intimately intertwined and their mobile nature contributes to excessive checking habits, which often derives from what is commonly labelled as the ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO). Besides being afraid to miss the news on social media, they also sometimes deliberately put pictures, writings, or even promote themselves that are not necessarily honest just to look updated. Ironically, this can be seen as looking for their sensations and happiness on fake social media. [6: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201805/addicted-social-media]

Using social networking can also trigger a lot of emotions in its users. Although social networking is only limited to virtual activity, the impact is certainly very real to the emotions of its users. A new study found that teenagers are increasingly depressed, feel hopeless and are more likely to consider suicide. Researchers found a sudden increase in teens' symptoms of depression, suicide risk factors and suicide rates in 2012 — around the time when smartphones became popular, says Jean Twenge, one of the authors of the study. Twenge's research found that teens who spend five or more hours per day on their devices are 71 percent more likely to have one risk factor for suicide. And that's regardless of the content consumed. Whether teens are watching cat videos or looking at something more serious, the amount of screen time goes hand in hand with the higher instances of depression. Another reason why social networking can cause depression is that many people just pretend to be happy when creating their identity and self-image in cyberspace. Very rarely do people really show their lives as they are on social networks. This kind of thing can also cause depression to other people because they think their lives are not as good as yours. Without realizing it, the pretense that exists on social networks causes many people to become depressed because they compare each other's lives. 

In line with this, back in 2014 there is a horrible case caused by addiction to gadget and social media. Danny Bowman, a 19 years old boy who got addicted to selfies. He would spend 10 hours a day taking up to 200 photos of himself on his iPhone. The teenager dropped out of school, remained housebound for six months and lost two stone in an attempt to capture the perfect self-portrait. Danny eventually became so depressed that he took an overdose, but he was discovered by his mother Penny and rushed to hospital. 

One thing that is not less important is how can people so addicted to social media. When people got addicted, they tend to prioritizing their selves above the others. The continuous upgrade of gadgets and interactive software programs makes people always on their gadget. As said before, they frequently check notifications from various applications even if there is not one. Consequently, their relationship with the society and people are ruined because of their isolation with the environment. Social media also brings social change to the society. Social changes that occur in certain social institution will be followed by other institution. A rapid social change can lead to temporary disorganization as a process of self-adjustment. Social change arise when there is a willingness from the member of the society to abandon old culture and social system to switch using a new one. People are no longer communicate with their surrounding environment. Such as when queuing, each of them is busy with their selves. It also happened in restaurants. We often sees family member sit with of each other without minding each other.

The continuous upgrade of gadgets and interactive software programs makes people always on their gadget. They frequently check notifications from various applications even if there is not one. Consequently, their relationship with the society and people are ruined because of their isolation with the environment. Social media also brings social change to the society. Social changes that occur in certain social institution will be followed by other institution. A rapid social change can lead to temporary disorganization as a process of self-adjustment. Social change arise when there is a willingness from the member of the society to abandon old culture and social system to switch using a new one. People are no longer communicate with their surrounding environment. Such as when queuing, each of them is busy with their selves. It also happened in restaurants. We often sees family member sit with of each other without minding each other. What went wrong?

The presence of social networking in the community is a phenomenon that marks a new chapter in modern life. Its existence can replace the role of friendship in the community because of its facilities that can connect people freely. From here it was found that social network users now prefer to establish communication by utilizing this site. They tend to see the practical and effective side because they don't have to adjust as the order communicates directly. At present, if teenagers do not have a site account on social media, the name is actually not out of date. And in order to show their existence, they finally began to learn to access social media. They assume that through the site they can develop their association to even be able to do business there. In general, teenagers who use internet facilities at internet cafes always access social networking sites.

With the proliferation of internet cafes in cities and even villages, it is increasingly easier for them to access social networking sites. Coupled with the growing development of technology so that to enjoy the site no longer need to go to the cafe. It is enough to open it through a mobile phone that is now more sophisticated and inexpensive, they can enjoy all the services provided by the friendship site. The more famous this friendship site makes users, especially among students, increase every day. The duration of accessing friendship sites is relatively high. They are more comfortable to keep fixing on the site to just comment, share photos and chat with their friends rather than having to read a book.

From this it was revealed a rather heartbreaking fact where there was a tendency for students who like to access social networks, their academic performance declined. This happened as a result of their being preoccupied with updating their status, commenting on status and photos of others, chatting, and so on which were very time-consuming. Most of them do this out of control because they consider the activity to not interfere with other activities. Even though the truth is a lot of time is wasted in writing, commenting on trivial matters far from being said to be intellect. Users of social networking, most likely always want to know their status every day so that they are unwittingly time consuming. They are triggered to write insignificant things, read trivial things, and also think intelligently.

Minimal supervision from parents is one factor to be a factor why they feel comfortable spending their time surfing the social media. Parents 'close their eyes' to this phenomenon. They just kept quiet knowing their children often access friendship sites until they forget time. But even parents cannot be too blamed for using social media because their children can use their cellphones to open the site and escape the supervision of their parents. Basically, social networking sites have an age limit for users who want to access the site. Social networks limit the age of users who can access it, which is at least 13 years old. This high use is undeniable due to the rapid advances in technology. Without the supervise of parents or adults, teenagers can freely open adult sites that contain pornography from curiosity and finally become addicted. Obviously this habit will destroy their mental and minds. Not only that, fraudulent actions by irresponsible individuals also often occur in terms of buying and selling goods in an online shop. The role of parents is clearly not enough to make children understand and understand social media. The role of the government is also important in monitoring the development of social media in Indonesia. The government must also be able to limit sites that are considered inaccessible, give severe sanctions to perpetrators of fraud, perpetrators who post matters relating to pornography, and provide blocking rules if it turns out there are several social media that harm users globally .

But living in an era of information technology like today should not make us antipathy in its development, on the other hand we must be wise in facing it. There needs to be a balance between the use of social media and maintaining relationship with others. There are two factors that can overcome the negative effects of social media, internal factors and external factors. Internal factors is a control and intention that come from ourselves for the usage of our own social media in a positive way. For example looking for information that is needed and the information is also a positive information. In other words, it is a self-controlled action. The External factors is a control that is influenced by other people such as parents who always supervise their children in playing their gadget and using their social media, nowadays there are many children who can easily affected by social media, if it happens to our brother or sister, our job is to remind them not to use social media in a negative way, if it is already become a habit it will be difficult to lose.

Set strict rules on how and when we can use social media. Parents are the role model for their children. If children see their parents spend some of their time on social media, then obviously it will encourage them to do the same. Take the advantage of social networks to strengthen relationships not to distance them. Of course there are benefits that can be obtained from social media such as ease of communication, which can be used to improve the quality of relationships with family but not the other way around, remember to never use social networking as the main way to interacting.

We must be able to balance the relationship in the real world with relationships on social media. You must be able to make social media a valuable addition to relationships in the real world, instead of replacing it. Always make time for real interactions. Learn to have a schedule of joint activities as a family. A simple example is like having dinner together, walking around, caressing or chatting openly but avoid using technology / social networking in those moments so it can not damage the intimacy of the atmosphere. Parents-children or fellow family member must have time to interact with each other face to face, caress, hug, which is certainly not possible when using social media.

As we have seen, social media has its own positive and negative effects on its use. We as teenagers, must be clever in sorting out how to use good and right social networks so that we don't fall into negative things. Social networks must be used properly and correctly. If it is used correctly, there are also many positive impacts that we can get. We can also regulate the pattern of our activities, so that it can be more useful and not to waste free time with things that are not important. We as a teenager have the main task of learning. Therefore, we must not abandon our main duties because it is very beneficial for us in the future. Indeed there is no written prohibition that prohibits us from accessing or playing on social networks, but it would be nice if we could do more useful things. Parents should also be able to play an active role in determining our future. Parents can supervise and guide their children with the effects of social networking. With the guidance of parents, it will reduce negative impacts.