Many people and today’s world would agree social media can become a distraction in everyday life. Today, a large number of people above the age of 12 have a smart phone or tablet with internet access. Many of those people have at least one social media account and access it very frequently. With this being said, a lot of people’s time is consumed on social media. People are constantly checking their status, or other people’s statuses. This can be an addictive habit and an obssession.

Being an 18 year college student waking up can be pretty tough but I still find time to check all of my social media apps. Checking all of them, not even posting, can take easily 10 minutes out of my morning. After I shower and get ready for class, I check my social media on my walk to class or during breakfast. During breakfast almost everyone is on their phone and usually there is very little conversation going on. Before and after class I check my social media to see, but most of the time people have not posted within the hour and a half time frame. Even though I know not many people have posted anything, let alone anything interesting, I still find myself almost obligated to look. Checking becomes such an addiction and it is extremely hard to break the addiction when everyone else around you is doing the same thing. As my day goes on I check my social media at least five more times before I start homework. Trying to do homework with a teenagers cell phone sitting right next to anyone can be a hard task for anyone. When this happens to me, I always feel this urge to see why my phone lit up or if I am missing anything. I often get distracted and homework manages to become lower on my list of priorities. Social media can become an obsession throughout the day and can consume a lot of time that could be used for something more important.

Not only are the social media companies enabling our addiction to social media, but the phone producers are as well. Ever since I received my first Apple iPhone, I became so intrigued with the idea of social media, especially the specific applications Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These apps actually play a significant role in many people’s lifestyle mainly because the time devoted by people into these apps is almost hard to comprehend. According to a report made by Common Sense Media, teens spend about nine hours a day on social media just for their own personal enjoyment. James Steyer, the founder of “Common Sense Media” put it in his own words after conducting the research “They spend far more time with media technology than any other thing in their life. This is the dominant intermediary in their life.”.  After seeing this I really tried to cut back on social media for a day, just to see if I really was apart of the population average that uses social media up to 9 hours daily. It really was not easy for me which then raises the question of “Do I really have an addiction to Social Media”?

Social media can also be harmful since people may not use it properly. Over the last week social media has been used to post views about politics. Many of these posts were extremely hurtful to people who support the candidate or people who felt personally victimized. My Facebook newsfeed has been spammed with my friend’s views on the election, name calling and constant sharing of videos for or against one of the candidates. Personally, I do not care much for their thoughts since most people are either flaunting their party’s win or complaining their party’s loss. Either way, both sides are wrong since social media is intended to share pictures and update your far away friends of what you are doing, not to share political views or opinions to persuade others. People forget why social media was created and end up just using it as a way to negatively affect people’s thoughts about a subject they feel strongly on.Countless amounts of fights have broken out on Facebook over the Election when Facebook is not the place to be having this discussion. All social media sites have become a debate and name calling site in the last few weeks and it has rapidly gotten out of hand. People expressing their views so drastically on social media has also influenced other people’s views because of how frequently they are seen and depending on who you are friends with determines how what you see on social media. While scrolling down my newsfeed on Facebook I see videos shared referring to negative things about political figures that most of the time are not even true! I once saw a video posted on facebook about Hillary Clinton that made allegations about her that were obviously not true. Below the video there were thousands of comments from supporters of the video and non supporters of the video. I saw comments from people (including the occasional death threat) who didn’t even know eachother that simply hated each other strictly because of their views on social media. Cases like this have seriously proven why social media is ultimately harmful.

There have been steps taken by major social media companies to try and protect its users from abuse and cyberbullying. Recently, Instagram has announced they are releasing many tools to prevent this including a filter that a user you can put on his or her posts that makes sure there are no explicit words “The crackdown on unwelcome comments reflects the large and persistent problem of abuse found in all corners of the web” (Katie Rogers, NY Times). This shows that social media sites are attempting to stop posts involving abusive words. Now, social media sites need to locate and fix the problem of why their apps are so addicting.