Carroll 1 Nancy Carroll Campbell English 1102 23 February 2014 Social Media: Contagious or Salubrious It is no question that social

media has changed the course for communication in the 21st century. Growing up with social media and the Internet has put a different aspect on my life compared to generations before me. There have been instances in which I have made a friend online and did not meet them face-to-face until much later. But what affect has this anti-social behavior had on not only myself, but also other students my age? Can social networking even be defined as anti-social behavior? Those that have grown up with social media tend to be more anxious when it comes to face-to-face communication considering they are accustomed to mediated conversations via technology. We rely on weak social media connections because most do not realize how much stronger our relations could be in the absence of a cell phone or computer. According to Maura Keller in Social Work Today, with the release of the fifth edition of the DSM, Internet addiction will now be listed as a mental illness marked by emotional shutdown, lack of concentration, and withdrawal symptoms. The truth of this statistic is extremely frightening as approximately five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues compared to youth of the same age during the Great Depression, as studied by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge.

Carroll 2 Many teens are becoming depressed due to unhealthy amounts of social media and Internet use, along with the personalities and relationships they create for themselves online. As Dr. Richard G. Jones, Jr., Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University, discussed on his research blog, some users, especially adolescents, engage in what is called friend-collecting behavior, which entails users friending people they dont know personally or that they wouldnt talk to in person in order to increase the size of their online network. Many teens struggle to make friends at school, but as soon as they enter the online world they are able to become someone they may fail to be in a social setting. They obtain the ability to create profiles and describe themselves in ways that can possibly stretch the truth. Pictures can be edited to look nothing like the original copy. People generally feel more powerful online as they hide behind a computer screen. Teens go from a few real-life friends to thousands of friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, addicting them as they compete in an online popularity contest. Knowing that someone is there in cyber space as your vicarious support system, reading your posts and sympathizing with your situations, thoughts and feelings genuinely makes you feel more valuable. Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at West Virginia University, Nicholas Bowman, explains that: for these people, they likely feel such a strong sense of identity online that they have some difficulty separating their virtual actions from their actual ones. Nowadays, young people often rise from insignificance to Internet fame depending on their posts as well as their number of followers. This form of self-presentation has teens hooked on social networking

Carroll 3 sites. People are often judged by how many followers they have, how many likes they receive on a photo and how many retweets they receive on a Tweet. Teens desire to be accepted and liked; they are hungry for this online appreciation. Professor Bowman continues to discuss how many of us caution that Internet addiction might be an inaccurate portrayal, as he proposes the question that, if social media is designed to connect people with people, then is it really a human-technology relationship or is it a human-human relationship mediated by technology? As a routine social media user, I have noticed that relationships are created, endured, and often ended through social media. Online dating has grown with social media as well. No longer do we have to meet people at the mall, in the grocery store or at the park. We can simply type in our interests and websites can calculate a match. In college, students often use this method in order to find roommates. However, teens tend to use networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to meet their significant others. On Twitter, teens see favoriting each others tweets as a common form of flirtation. Strangers can message each other on Facebook and be In a Relationship by the end of the week without ever meeting each other in person. Teens often fail to realize the danger in these methods. If you do end up in a relationship, is it really official unless your Facebook status says In a Relationship? Teens especially feel that if their love is not proclaimed on the Internet, it cannot be true. Relationships of any kind often end because of social media as well. Significant others tend to become extremely jealous of each other when communicating with another person online. Also, teens tend to post about their relationship problems online for the world to see, which can cause

Carroll 4 tension as other people begin to put their two cents in. The problem that should be between two people then becomes everyone else on the networks problem as well. When meeting people on the Internet, their online lives often do not match up with their offline lives. If anyone wants to find out about the interests of a person he/she is dating, he/she can just go to his/her Facebook page or follow his/her Tumblr, a great point I came across on the blog Life Love & Music; that cuts out the whole first date and learning about the basics of someone because its all on their website. This ruins the course of a relationship, as you cant truly deepen one without personal interaction. People also tend to bond through posts by liking or sharing them. Instead of starting a conversation and asking how someone is we can just scroll down their timeline and read for ourselves, and this maintains the friendship even if you havent recently spoken to this person face-to-face. The creation of social networking sites was intended to promote the expansion of communication and a quick and easy exchange of knowledge, as authors Sebastian Bruque, Jose Moyano and Jacob Eisenberg explained in Individual Adaption to IT-Induced Change: The Role of Social Networks. They continued to report that: in dense informational networks, individuals can make use of a closely woven network of ties, with many links among the members, to keep each other informed about theproblems they encounter and the solutions they find. However, teens on social media sites tend to stay away from diversity and usually only follow people that share the same interests and beliefs as themselves, making it difficult to expand their perspectives

Carroll 5 and learn new information, according to Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Centers Internet Project. Overall, it is inevitable that social media has and will continue to change the course for personal relationships entirely. Simple conversations between two people face-to-face are already becoming rare and difficult as people are so used to typing messages on a laptop or cell phone. Teens, especially, are infected by this epidemic, as most have never known what the world was like without social media. Social media has become a routine way of life, and as Paul Booth, assistant professor of media and cinema studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University, explains: As a society well be okay weve always adjusted to new technology. So whether its wearable communication mediaor more cloud computing, well change and adapt.

This was an awesome paper Nancy! I did a similar paper last semester about social media and the impact it has on our society. This truly is a topic that everyone should be informed on. Anyways, I didnt really have too many comments throughout because of how well-written this was in my opinion. Overall, some things you could change would be to more clearly define the sections of social media that you are talking about. For instance you could separate the positive vs. negative effects of social media use. Another thing that I noticed is that your paper is almost completely about how this is affecting teens but what is the impact on other generations or upcoming generations in the future? If you want it to be completely about teens I would state this in the title or first paragraph. It was good that you had so many sources of informationjust make sure to cite these sources along with an MLA works cited to give these people complete credit. Most of the extra questions to help your paper are all in the comments that I wrote! Also, I think that putting in a paragraph about internet addiction, commonly referred to as compulsive internet use, would really help the reader understand the affects that social media can have on an individual

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physically, mentally, and emotionally. Keep working hard on your paper and it will be a very interesting paper for other readers! Edited by Tyler Canaday