What are the negative impacts of social media on society?

[☺pÕcpaul★]

I am doing a report on this and although I have researched the topic I would like to hear some opinions or experiances please.

[Silena]

For most teens, it would be a low self esteem. Seeing all those magazines, commercials, shows with pretty and really skinny women would lower down their confidence.

[Sarcasticcap707]

The biggest one is violence. Yes, there's a lot of other negative things in the media, but with the increase in violence, we train kids to think violence is okay... and if not okay, a part of life and there's nothing we can do to stop it. And so, America has the largest violent crime problem in the world, and it's no coincidence that we're the largest consumer of violent media. (action movies, action video games, etc)

[magician girl]

it makes you become too self-conscious... and makes you act/think/behave in terms of something else, not your inner self..

[happyanimal360]

Negative Impacts: 1) More indirect conversations (for ex. via blog) than direct conversations (face-to-face) between people. 2) People are more easily inclined to share their personal lives and where-abouts (for ex. on Facebook).

In all, social media at first seems liberating, but at the end of the day you are more isolated and more at risk of sparing your privacy than ever.

[Onora]

I'm assuming you mean web-based interaction such as Facebook, Twitter ...

It seems to me that using social media can too easily become a replacement for building real relation ships with real people. Clearly it can be used to facilitate organisational details of a social life but it becomes dangerous if the pursuit of virtual friends (e.g. I have 750 Facebook friends many of whom I have never met) eats up the time that should be used to nurture 6 good friendships that will last.

Another disadvantage is that it could become an isolating influence on an individual - either the skills to develop relationships will not fully develop or they will decay from lack of use. Meanwhile others will be forging ahead forming meaningful relationships.

Social media have a function as another layer of communication rather than as a replacement for convential face-to-face contact.