Social Media: Friend or Foe and How It Shapes Our Lives

In my 'Social Media: Friend or Foe?' essay, I explore what role social media has played in my life. It is a summer evening, my family and I are all home watching Tv and time is flying by, we’re about to head to our rooms and sleep. So, we wish each other goodnight and leave the living room. I put my phone on a stool nearby and lie down on the bed. A few minutes later, my phone rings a bit, I grab it quickly and answer the messenger chat then take a look to some posts on Instagram and Facebook. Three hours later, my eyes haven’t closed, and I am still scrolling down on my device, yet, I have an early morning schedule. The next day, I felt exhausted and my daily performance wasn’t at its best, altered by the restless hours spent on the phone. This is just a simple trouble that social media has caused to me when I was young, but quite worse scenarios have been experienced by users especially teenagers.

I was born and raised in Rwanda, a developing country in the Sub Saharan Africa where one wouldn’t expect the situation about cell phones and social media to be any similar to how it is in US or any other economically advanced nations in the world. Then, fast internet connections or smart phones were still a privilege available to few mainly from urban centers. In fact, hardly any teenager from rural areas owned a smart phone. Yet, as surprisingly as it may seem, some effects weren’t non-existent. For instance, clerks would use phones at work and unintentionally disregard customers.

As a teenager, I grew up in a generation where technology and social media were transforming the society. As a member of the minority that owned a smart phone by the time they were thirteen, I was continually attracted by the unlimited information this tool has to offer. Blinded by the desire to see the thoughts and opinions of the supposedly friends, I threw away most of time and cherished virtual relationships with strangers over the internet that I almost forgot the sincerity there is in genuine friendship of family and friends. Posts, tweets, snaps and whatever else it is called, the rise of social media has created an era where being a teenager is harder than it ever was. Constant pressure has become a daily routine whereby we live in the dull shadow of the people we follow, actors, musicians, models and more. What’s trending? We are always asking ourselves.

We consider these people as role models and we feel pushed to look like them, act as they do, speak as they do, and we could be influenced to take extreme courses of action to mimic them because their success has become a measure of ours. We are living in a life bubble that could burst at any moment due to our low self-esteem and the peer pressure to act in a certain way and feel validate by the society. We create our identity and judge others based on the likes, comments and followers they possess. In the past years, a new expression has taken root “doing something for the gram”. Basically, it means you do things in your life so you can take picture and show off on Instagram. This persistent demonstration of how good our lives becomes addictive in the long run. Fear to taint the already-created image becomes itself a drive in one’s life.

A lot of pressure can be felt when one denies one’s true feelings and is struggling to find positive and attractive content to post about one’s life. Consequently, young people are now very prone to isolation from society, depression and anxiety as a result of the continual camouflage of their true self for the sake of pleasing the public. Additionally, crimes like cyber bullying emotionally affect the victims for instance, when people post unpleasant things about you and you realize you have no control on it because it already has been shared to thousands of people.

Social medias can also indirectly cause physical harm. A professional stuntman can perform stunts after years of practice, experience and with the appropriate equipment to reduce any risks of injury. On the other hand, the viewer of this content on YouTube will only see the performance and if audacious enough will want to reproduce the same without any prior training or precautions which may result in an accident. When walking on the streets despite the time of the day, you’ll notice folks occupied by their devices. The same is at home, during breaks at work or school, taking eyes off these has become a seemingly impossible task. Parents spend less time with their children, the same for spouses. Our attention to details has lowered and our sleep as well. Health issues like vision problems and cancer are a result of the ill-use of this technology. Although social media have many detriments, there are benefits. This same bubble that can be destructive, is instructive as well and can be more effective than therapy in terms of finding emotional stability. With blogs and sites on almost all subjects, it is easy to find a place of interest and feel in your dimension with people across the world that share your beliefs or are going through similar circumstances as you are.

As humans, people want their voices to be heard, and taken account for. Social media has helped people to express their feelings and thoughts on ongoing world issues. In some ways, it has connected the whole world in a single society. Modern day technology has revolutionized the world as we know it and simplified our lives. Shopping, cleaning, cooking, laundry and even more burdensome chores are now executed by machines with a precision and efficiency beyond ours. Social media was created to help people maintain connections and obtain information. Nowadays, almost everyone has an account on one of the many networking platforms. In my opinion, the negative effects of social media outweigh the positive especially in the youth. Older generations were not born into this digitalized society, they also use the technology but perceive it as a dispensable gadget. Whereas the younger generation is dependent on the technology. To end up this 'Social media: friend or foe' essay, as far as humankind evolves in the future, there is no escaping technology. Therefore, people need to change the destructive patterns of social media by setting up limitations and regulations in order to use it in way that is more beneficial than it is harmful.