【 ELCT Year 3 / 2017 Research Paper 】
「 Q2) Social media makes us even more lonely. 」
Social media is an online platforms via websites or applications that
allow people from different locations at any time to create, share, or view content as
well as to participate in ‘social networking’. Several social media platforms are
Instagram, facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Youtube, Whatsapp, and even text messages.
Social Media has both pros and cons, depending on how people utilize it. While
social media helps us to keep in contact with our loved ones and to stay connected
with them even when they're on the opposite side of the world, recent studies have
discovered that there is a possibility that social media in fact makes us lonelier. One
of these studies that researched this was carried out by the University of Pittsburgh
in which researchers went and questioned 1,787 adults between the ages of 19 and
32 years old about their social media uses, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or
Tumblr. They discovered that people who use social media over 58 times a week,
are three times more likely to feel lonely than those who use the sites under nine
times, additionally, the results of the experiment suggests that social media adds to
the number of people having “FOMO”, the fear of missing out. However, it was never
concluded whether or not social media was the cause of the peoples’ loneliness,
since it could be that already lonely people are more likely to spend a longer amount
of their time on social networks. “We do not yet know which came first - the social
media use or the perceived social isolation,” co-author Elizabeth Miller, professor of
paediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, said. In conclusion, does social media
cause people to be more lonely? In this essay, I will argue for social media being the
acclaimed cause of heightened loneliness in people.
Firstly, it is said that social media is one of the greatest developments
throughout the whole course of human history. It connects people worldwide, even
changing the way that people do business. Companies even maintain their own
social media account in order to interact with real time buyers. It seems useful in the
aspect where global knowledge is shared among the people throughout the world,
people know what is going on in our communities, as well as around the world.
People find it easier to maintain relationships even from a distance, compared to a
time in the past where people grew up and simply drifted apart from their friends and
even their families as a natural “consequence” of moving on in life. Thus social
media helps people across the globe to keep in contact with pictures, statuses, about
the highlights of their lives. Despite all the benefits that social media provides us
with, why are people still feeling lonely, even with the constant connection. Through
several studies, it is strongly suggested that social media is the cause of some
serious mental health issues. Well, despite the pr...
