Assignmet Example on Social Media

What Is the History of This Topic?

Social media began in 1997 by the creation of Six degrees which lasted from 1997 to 2001. People were able to create profiles and also make friends with other users. From this era, people began to create blogs and to create instant messaging. ICQ was later created and was followed closely by America online, AOL's instant messenger and others. Other social media sites such as YouTube became famous in 2005 while Facebook and Twitter became available to users by 2006. Today there are many social media sites that people use in their everyday life and they tend to affect how they live and interact with others. Millenials or Generation Y are persons who were born between 1980 and 2000. These people became adults around the beginning of the 21st century. About 18 million people in the world are regarded to be millennial and therefore constitute 25 percent of the world's population. People who are now between 18 and 30 use more than one social media platform. Millennial are sharing more and using social media platforms more than the generations that were before them. Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook are some of the social media used by this generation. According to the American press, the institute is that 88% of the millennial search for news on Facebook, 83% from YouTube and 50% from Instagram (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zickuhr, 2010).

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What Is the Current Status of This Topic?

There are many studies that have been done regarding social media and millennial. The increase in the rise of these studies is the growing number of people using these platforms. Further social media is the newest and the most growing aspect of people's lives. Studies on this topic are meant to discover the effects of social media whether positive or negative. There are many conflicting studies regarding the topic since the researchers carry out their studies differently and the studies also contain their opinions. It is therefore difficult to get a clear picture as to what the effects of social media are. Many companies are studying the topic to ensure that they have the data regarding trends to ensure that they take advantage of the group to offer products and advertise through social media platforms. People are interested in the topic of social media and millenials to understand this group of people in regards to their interests, motivations, and others. However, much research is needed to ascertain the rate of anxiety among millenials that occurs due to social media use. Anxiety is one of the effects of using social media. Young people become anxious when they fail to log in to their social media accounts to see what others have commented. Further, other problems have been discovered such as poor meaningful relationships among young people since most of them neglect direct communication and use social media most of the time to communicate. There are many issues that surround the topic, however; anxiety is the main issue that affects the young people (Sago, 2010).

Why Is This Topic Important?

Social media has become an important part of people's lives since they use it frequently. It is, therefore, necessary to study its effects on millennial since they are the first people to grow up using the internet. Social media has its effects on people since it mostly results in addiction. It is designed to make people long for it and therefore failed to visit the sites makes a person have various negative emotions such as anxiety. This situation causes young people to spend a lot of time on these sites, therefore, neglecting the important things in their lives such as interacting face-to-face with friends and family. This situation results in young people failing to create meaningful associations and interactions which affects their emotions and who they become in the future. The study of how social media affects millenials will help them realize its advantages and disadvantages and know how to balance its use and social life to ensure they live a meaningful life. Many companies study how millenials use social media so that they can know what strategies to use to sell or market their merchandizes. The widespread use of social media among young people indicates that these platforms are powerful and have the potential to build or destroy them. If social media impacts negatively on young people, most of them would be doomed since they use it all the time. However, if the platform is beneficial, it is likely to positively impact their lives. Studies reveal that social media has certain positive effects such as promoting learning, social interactions, and increasing technological know-how. However, since Millennials and other young people spend around 7-12 hours of media per day, it tends to be harmful to them in a great way. Spending too much time on these platforms lowers a person's self-esteem, increases learning disorders, irresponsible sexual behaviors, aggression, and others (Wood, Center & Parenteau, 2016).

It is necessary for sociologists to study how millennials use social media since it tends to explain a lot of issues that are being witnessed in society today. The rates of suicide have increased in recent years and it can be associated with the use of social media by most the young people. Further, there has been an increase in online bullying that result in low self-esteem which causes a lot of problems in social interactions.

Therefore social media tends to reduce face-to-face interactions which are detrimental to a person's lives since such relations are what help build people to have happy and meaningful lives. This topic is therefore important to sociologist as it helps them uncover the negative and positive effects of social media so as to encourage or discourage young people on its use (Wood, Center & Parenteau, 2016).

What Are the Differing Perspectives on This Topic?

Social media use among the millennial has various perspectives. The continued use of social media may have a different impact on this group of individuals. There is a need for individuals using them to keep things into the right perspectives to avoid the harmful effects of social media. On the brighter side, social media can keep these millenials connected and keep up with the current events. On the other side, ii can contribute to anxiety among the millenials especially due to the bombardment of massive information, increased expectations, and other stressful situations.

Anxiety is one of the perspectives on social media. Anxiety is attributed to a lot of stress and depression in the millenials. Millenials mostly preoccupied with social media factor that make them become preoccupied with what is going on around them such that they end up forgetting about themselves. For instance, social media offers a wide range of information that in return cause the millenials to continue comparing themselves with the people they see in the social media. This may significantly affect their self-esteem since, at the current financial status; they cannot "match" the status of the people they are comparing themselves with. Similarly, this anxiety significantly affects the millenials who are already undertaking their studies since their level of concentration is significantly affected hence end up performing poorly in academics (Wood, Center & Parenteau, 2016).

The second perspective of social media among the millenials is it promotes social connection. Nowadays, people have become quite busy with work, studies, and developing themselves making them lack the time of the meeting and interacting with friends. Therefore, social media has made it easy to communicate frequently through video chatting, chatting, and sharing "status" with friends. As a result, people feel connected with one another regardless of the distance between them. The use of social media has also made it for people to arrange for lunch dates, share experiences, and connect with family and friends. These are some of the things that were impossible without social media (Manago & Vaughn, 2015).

What Is Your Opinion on This Topic?

Social media has impacted the lives of millenials in ways that people could not imagine. In my opinion, the negative effects of the use of social media on the millenials are more than the positive implications of the social media use. The positive implications of the social media use in the millenials include things such as the creation of employment opportunity like the social media managers, social media department in companies with its set of employees, and social media strategy for companies among others. Further, social media has made it possible for some people to create meaningful relationships out of the use of social media.

However, I believe that the correlation between the excessive social media use and anxiety is one of the serious issues that the millenials are currently facing. The use of social media should be kept in check. Millenials should learn how to allocate specific time for social media and regulate its use in order to remain productive. Reducing anxiety levels among the youth as a result of the excessive social media use will require a concerted effort from the millenials themselves and the society at large. Social media may be working well to increase the social interactions of the people, but on the other hand, it may be the one causing an increase in anxiety among them. Therefore, it is important for everyone to put the use of social media into its right perspective.

References

Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social Media & Mobile Internet Use among Teens and Young Adults. Millennials. Pew internet & American life project.

Manago, A. M., & Vaughn, L. (2015). Social media, friendship, and happiness in the millennial generation. In Friendship and happiness (pp. 187-206). Springer, Dordrecht.

Sago, B. (2010). The Influence of Social Media Message Sources on Millennial Generation Consumers. International Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications, 2(2).

Wood, M., Center, H., & Parenteau, S. C. (2016). Social media addiction and psychological adjustment: religiosity and spirituality in the age of social media. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 19(9), 972-983.