Today’s social media and its impact on society

By Alley Kelsey

For the Frontiersman

Due to the growing impact of social media in our culture, Tuesday afternoon Christiana Benoit shared her thoughts and opinions on its effect on the people in our society. Everyday people and their outlooks are affected by what goes on within the walls of social media.

Christiana, 30, is a graphic design artist. She attended CSU, San Bernardino majoring in graphic design and marketing. Christiana uses social media to work; it is a way for her to sell her drawings, paintings, etc. Her job also includes designing web pages for other people’s businesses, which is how she makes her living. Yet, when asked of her opinions on social media, she had strong thoughts on why it is actually corrupting our society.

Social media is a wide topic that ranges from whether it’s corrupting or improving our society, to the positive and negative effects it has on the lives of people, or if it even has any effect at all. In a recent survey, people’s responses were very similar when asked the positives of it, “You can stay in touch with friends or family that you may not regularly see in person. It’s the fastest and easiest way to know how a loved one in another state is doing, or maybe just a friend you haven’t had time to see lately.” However, when asked about the negatives of having social media accounts, the responses varied. Answers such as negativity, miscommunication, cyber bullying, bashing stereotypes, time consumption and constant drama were common. Showing that, in many opinions, the negativity of social media is higher compared to the positives.

During the interview, Christiana was asked, in her opinion, if social media accounts had a more positive or negative impact on society, “Negative overall. It’s driven a rift between a lot of people and caused issues with younger generations who lack communicative and verbal skills, social skills and emotional sensitivity. People expect you to know everything about their life by reading their all day feed and don’t want to talk about it but would rather you follow their account — it dissolves the social bonds and social community that was more prevalent before social media existed.”

How many hours a day do you spend online? You can look into it by going into your phone settings > battery > battery usage > and tapping on the app.

Alley Kelsey is a junior at Burchell High School.