Social Media Bring Unhappiness

Social media is important for communication because it is the media for social interaction and we can get much new information from social media. We can also keep in touch and share our happy life event with many people from many different places. Then, the popularity of the social media increased rapidly in the last decade. This is probably due to the reason that college and university students as well as teens used it extensively to get global access. On the contrary, social media has many negative effects because it can cause people to experience negative feelings and forget their real world. According to a study by the University of Michigan, 2013, college-age adults say they felt bad when using the social media platform. For that reason, usage of social media caused people to feel less happy in the moment and more dissatisfied with their lives.

In addition, according to the study by Berlin's Humboldt University, 2013, social media is the second most common cause of envy because users can compare how many birthday greetings they receive from their social media friends and how many "likes" or comments are made on photos and postings. Then, social media users feel worse about themselves after accessing social media and they will feel jealous when others have something better than them. For Cahya, 2012, a student from Yogyakarta, said that she feels jealous after accessing social media because she thinks that there will be always someone better than her. It does not mater in which aspect, but it is always true. Therefore, social media is not good for people because they will feel inferior to others without a real reason.

Hanna Krasnova, 2013, a researcher from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin's Humboldt University, told that witnessing friends' vacations, love lives and work successes on social media can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness. People will look other people lives and envy them because it is easy for them to become a stalker in social media’s life. Usually, when they become a stalker, people will open and comment on others people “profiles” based on others status and a random picture. Then, in their social media account, people will show what they have with posting the picture of their food, random items, and mostly important, themselves, and it will makes others people jealous. Agatha also agreed that she will show what they have in their social media account because she will feel satisfy after other people know what she has. For that reason, it will appear negative effects because it can cause some to experience negative feelings, which can morph into criticism, judgment and competition with others or even depression and lowered feelings of self.

People do not think of their own life when comparing to others because they will want to have something best without paying attention on their lives after they looked into others people social media. The researchers, 2013, also found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives because they will feel lonely, frustrated and angry. Cahya also feels lonely, frustrated and angry after she saw her friend’s status and photos because she thinks that she cannot do the same thing as her friend did. In fact, if you want to be better than the others, you do not need to improve yourself because you only have to make the others look bad.  Therefore, we should stop to look on someone social media because we have to be grateful for what we already have now.

On social media, people can be anyone they want to be, but they will not know the real person behind the profile and that is bad for society. It is proved by Agnes, 2013, a student from Yogyakarta, because she said that social media makes her become worse every time. In her social media account, she said that she has more than 1000 friends, but she does not know who they are because they often manipulate their profile’s data. She thinks that many people want to show their best with showing and posting anything that they have and it makes her disappointed because they cannot be who they really are. According to Fischer Kristen, the users of social media cannot be happy because they always want more. When they look to other profile, they will be tempted to copy other people, to do the same things, and to act and think like other people. The problem with this is that if they copy someone, they will never know who they really are and what they really want, and then they will never grow spiritually. In consequence, we have to be ourselves, stop to become others and we will accept ourselves as we really are.

Social media users also compete to each other to show who the better one is because they want to become famous. Then, on social media’s life, it is easy to become the famous person because you just need to post your funny video or song cover or many more to get attention. They will instantly get popular because it is easy for other people to look what they are doing in their social media’s profile. After they become famous, social media users will try to beat each other because they will maintain what they already have now and will never let people to take what they have. Agnes has ever experienced it because she has ever posted the video when she was dancing “Gangnam Style” on her high school with her friends. After she posted her video on her social media account, she became famous instantly because she has just posted something different, but she could become famous only 2 weeks. Then, she realized that if she wanted to become famous, she has to post something new every time and it would waste her time. Therefore, if we want to become famous, we have to show who we really are in our real life because we are unique, so we will not waste our time.

In their social media account, people want to other people know that they are better than others because they always show what they have in their social media. On the contrary, it will appear some negative effects because they will do anything be the best in their social media lives. Cahya has ever experienced it after accessing her social media account. She said that she became consumerism because she wanted to show that she also had and bought many things that was popular and could make her happy, such as clothes, cell phone and many more. Therefore, we should limit to buy something useless and be careful of what we will do in the future because we may always want more and we cannot be satisfied of what we already have now.

Social media users become an individual person because they are used to work alone and when they have a problem, they will share it in their social media account.  In 1998, Robert Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, found that the more people used the Web, the lonelier and more depressed they felt. After people went online for the first time, their sense of happiness and social connectedness dropped, over one to two years, as a function of how often they used the Internet. Agatha Cahya Utami also experienced it because she often feels lonely and depressed when her social media’s friends can post many happy life event with their friends. On the other words, we can try to share our problem with our friends, so we will not feel lonely and depressed.

People become lazy to communicate in the real world because many people become addicted to social media, for example we can easily see people when they are checking their phones to see their texts or social media site and they cannot stop. Agnes rarely opens her social media account because she thinks that if she always opens her account, she will be addicted and will not want to stop posting many things in her social media account. According to the study by University of Michigan, 2013, the social media users feel happy when they can share anything in their social media but they cannot realize how awesome their life is if they can share her experience to other people in their real life. Therefore, let us make a good step for our future life with trying to share our happy life event to others and not often to open our social media account, so we will not get lonely and depressed.

According to the study by University of Michigan, 2013, people always do their own works alone because they are too busy with their social media lives. Besides, many people who have many social media account will avoid face-to-face communication because they think that they have already shared everything in their social media lives and they can also easily getting online friends more than real friends. Cahya has many social media account and she always posts what she has already done in her account. On the other hand, she realizes that it is not good for her because she cannot have much time to socialize with others and it can reduce her communication skills. Therefore, if we always share our activities in social media, we will not be able to communicate and socialize effectively in person with others.

People become addicted to live freedom with their social media’s account because they will feel happy when they can do everything they want and they think that in social media, they can do everything they want to do. On the other hand, social media can be bad for society because kids can go on social media and they begin to lose their social life. They spend most of their time on the internet, when they could be doing something productive. Cahya and Agnes also realize that they cannot focus on their study because they always want to post and know many things as possible as they can know. Even though we can get much information and many friends from social media, we have to pay attention with our lives, so we will live happy.

It is important to limit ourselves from social media because social media bring so much satisfaction, disappointment, comparison, shame, embarrassment and abandonment. If you are feeling a little down or even a little envious, do not beat yourself up about it. It is just a gentle nudge for you to look deeper inside and figure out what direction you want or need to go with your own life. Then, choose wisely how you react because we need to build a good life with our real world and do not let those feelings turn toxic. Instead, we have to be grateful, congratulate others and take the positive energy. In short, we have to limit with enjoying and savoring each moment of our lives with our real friends and try to make a better communication, so we can get a brighter future and a happiness life.

Agata Nina Puspita


References:

Anonymous. (2012, November 2). Negative Effects of Social Networking Sites for Students. Retrieved November 24, 2013 from http://performancing.com/negative-effects-of-social-networking-sites-for-students/

Bell, Poorna. (2013, August 8). Facebook Is Making Us Unhappy, Fact. We Ask Top Happiness Experts For Advice On Switching Off (PICTURES). Retrieved November 11, 2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/20/facebook-unhappy-happiness-advice_n_3779510.html

Fischer, Kristen. (2013, October 28). Is social media making you unhappy? Retrieved November 11, 2013 from http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/1019441/is-social-media-making-you-unhappy

Gluskin, Dawn. (2013, September 11). Is Social Media Making You Unhappy? Retrieved November 10, 2013 from http://www.wellnesstoday.com/inspiration/is-social-media-making-you-unhappy

Goldsmith, Belinda. (2013, January 22). Facebook Study Says Envy Is Rampant On The Social Network. Retrieved November 24, 2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/facebook-study-envy_n_2526549.html

Konnikova, Maria. (2013, September 10). How Facebook Make us Unhappy. Retrieved November 24, 2013 from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/the-real-reason-facebook-makes-us-unhappy.html 20 08 2013