Social media generates many pros and cons in the lives of it’s users. Each site is special for it’s different attractions. Each one affecting the lives of people around us, good and bad. Sites destroying the egos and lives of teens and adults.

Myspace:

MySpace, created in 2003, was the first social media of my time and the first to affect society by starting the trend. The site was originally for teen and adult bloggers to interact (not necessarily with each other). A forever changing blog with cool backgrounds, pictures and music, turned into a way of revealing your personal problems to the rest of your followers by making dramatic statuses with emotional characters. Most people tend to speak, or in this case post, out of anger when they’re in the heat, which can lead to drama when all your problems are being publicized in an attention seeking way. Like many sites, the users decreased and the reasoning behind the site changed. Now, musician and actor Justin Timberlake owns it and mainly musicians use it.

When entrepreneurs realized the uprising of social medias, it became an ongoing race to create a site that tops and replaces the others.

Facebook:

Facebook was created in 2004 by two Harvard students. According to about.com, the site was essentially created as a “hot or not” website, where you rate Harvard students as hot or not. Even from the start it was meant to cause drama. Now that adults have logged into the site, teens have fled to other sites. Today, it’s mainly used for reconnecting with old friends or getting the name of a business out to the world, which are both great aspects of the site, but what about the negative effects it has had on people?

“Truth is,” adolescent Facebook posts created by the teenage world, is a status that anyone could like and the creator would post on your wall what they thought about you. It caused drama that ended in hurt feelings and broken hearts. We can blame the teenager who liked the post and asked for the truth, but if they didn’t know there was ever a problem between them and the creator, then any Facebook friend could now see that there was in fact a feud. At first I thought the immature game faded away because we grew up and moved out of that stage, but seeing as though some adults get in fights over Facebook and teens started a new war on Twitter, I can’t say the immaturity ever ends.

According to MarketWatch.com, Facebook has lost 1.4 million users in America alone in December 2013 to three different medias: Twitter for statuses, Instagram for pictures, and Vine for videos. While Vine isn’t known to be used for much more than a good laugh at funny video clips, Twitter and Instagram have their own significant ways of destroying friendships and individuals.

Twitter:

Ah, the beloved social media of the moment. Some call it Twitter, I call it Dated Problems with a 21st Century Twist. You “tweet,” or make posts of things you love, hate, quotes, how you feel or the most common: subtweets. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a subtweet is a tweet you post about someone, but no one knows who it’s referring to except the person who it’s about and/or other people with an insight on the drama.

When I originally got a Twitter, I did it to help out a friend who was in a “subtweeting fight.” Once she found out it was about her, she tweeted back, confirming the war. Girls started teaming up and she was alone. I watched it play out quietly with the occasional supportive comment to my friend. After they worked it out I kept my Twitter for a while. It wasn’t until I got into a fight myself that I realized how unnecessary the site really was and how easy it is to get sucked into the drama. One person starts the fight, the other person responds, a friend supports one team, while another supports the other, and soon it is a domino effect until it seems the whole school is involved. I just wish the issues were dealt with face-to-face or at least over text if face-to-face is so unbearable.

And as if I don’t see enough of it in my community, magazines and websites are constantly referring to celebrity drama on Twitter and other social medias. It just shows how infatuated society is with the idea of drama, and they egg on a fight just so they have something to talk about.

Instagram:

As a photographer, I figured Instagram would be a reasonable, anti-drama site, but Instagram is what opened my eyes to a new problem social media has. Instagram has a sneaky way of making people feel bad about themselves.There’s no anonymous messages or people posting mean comments on photos (that I’ve seen), but there is a self destruction problem. People can post any pictures on this site, whether it’s a “selfie,” a favorite celebrity or even food, you don’t choose what you’re going to see, only the people you follow.

For example, you see a picture of your ex with one of your friends. All these assumptions run through your head as you begin to overthink things. Or maybe you look at pictures of friends who have nice things and you rage with jealousy thinking about how your parents cheated you from a nice life. People are easily discouraged by their images so seeing prettier and skinnier people can quickly make someone sad. Even seeing pictures of people having a good time when you’re not can send a lot of people to the breaking point because they feel so alone.

When social media’s effect on society is mentioned, they don’t talk about self destruction, it’s always cyber bullying and how teens don’t get outside enough because they’re glued to their computer screen. This causes many sites, including Instagram, to get looked over as a problem in the social media world.

Ask.fm:

Ask.fm isn’t as popular as Twitter or other social medias, probably because it’s a set up to get attacked online with hatred, but for some reason teens find it appealing. Those who have it usually attach their links to other social medias such as Instagram and Twitter, giving anyone who follows their social media a chance to send them anonymous questions or statements. Anyone can ask, you don’t have to have an account.There’s no telling who the anonymous is unless they confess which is rare if at all. I couldn’t tell you why the site was invented seeing as though there’s no purpose to it other than anonymous haters tormenting you with all the rumors and gossip they’ve heard. It’s not like Instagram where you can post pictures or Twitter where you can make statuses. It only gives other people opportunities to blast you with personal questions. You don’t have to answer the questions you don’t want to, but then what is the point of having an account? There’s just no telling.

I’ve quickly forgotten the pros of social media thinking of all the people the world has lost to social media incidents. The worst part is, people think that just by saying they hate social media, they are helping bring society’s obsession to a halt. They’re completely fooling themselves. They sit there and complain that social media and the internet is so bad for kids, but then they turn around and read these magazines and papers about how one celebrity called another one ugly on social media, giving not only the source the satisfaction, but the celebrities. Turn the page, don’t click on the link, scroll past the picture, I promise it’s not helping anyone to give it your attention.

How would life be without social media? People would have to come out from behind their computer screen and talk face-to-face. No cyberbullying or creepy pedophiles making fake accounts to talk to children. Suicide rates would decline rapidly. No college or job rejections because students wouldn’t have posted that picture or tweeted that inappropriate joke. Whether its for a week or for the rest of your life, challenge yourself to give it up.