Other Issues in Media and Society

Here I'm going to recommend you some blogs of my collegues which were also talking about media, but in its different aspects. Those blogs are very interesting, so I think you will enjoy reading it! Let's start.
1. My classmate Tereza talks about media influence on what we eat and drink. Her main message is to start thinking about health more and eat healthy food, but not fast food which media advertise. I hope, this blog will be interesting for you! http://rehaktereza.wix.com/media-and-food
2. Another blog which I would like to recommend is Laura's blog. She is talking about the violence and sex in media and how it can affect especially children. In fact, this topic is important, parents should control their children from inappropriate information that they can get on the Internet. Here is her blog https://lauras08.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/how-i-see-it/comment-page-1/#comment-5
3. The third one is Iuliia's blog. Her topic is very similar to mine, she is talking about the addiction to social media and how it might be dangerous, providing some examples of current events which are related to addiction to social media. So, I hope you will enjoy her blog as well!http://themodernaddiction.blogspot.cz/
4. For example, my classmate Anna is talking about how media shapes ethnic stereotypes. This topic is vert relevant, so I'm sure I will like reading it. https://bazhenovaa.wordpress.com/
5. The last one is Nina's blog where she is talking about modern and print media. I hope it will be interesing for you too! https://modernxprintmedia.wordpress.com/

I hope you will enjoy reading all those blogs which I recommend you!

How I See It.

According to the PewResearchCenter website, 90% of young adults use social media. Teenagers spend most of their time surfing on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many others. Why? It is obvious that people are looking for someone who they can communicate with through social media because they cannot socialize with real people. This virtual communication might become the reason for low self-esteem and development of depression.

Users of social networks constantly talk to their virtual “friends” and then compare themselves with them, starting from on appearance to the brand of different clothes and technology. Undoubtedly, most of people who use social media are trying to present themselves in an ideal way without any negative. Thus, they show others their successfulness and superiority. It causes addiction to social media which can lead to change of mood, fear, depression, and other mental disorders. Those people, who are communicating with virtual ones, are prone to experience feeling of inferiority and jealousy. Teenagers can feel jealous only by looking at others’ pictures, reading their stories and everything that is happening in their life. While other people post different photos of their “ideal” life, others start feeling not happy for them, but angry and envy.

Another reason for depression can be addiction to social networks. Teenagers feel necessity in being always “online”. So they need to reply all messages all the time and see how many “likes” they get so far. “Likes” become very popular among all the social media. Teens are ready to do everything to get “like” and positive comments on their pictures or other posts. Race for these “likes” can simply lead to the first stages of depression. Those who do not receive the desired number of “likes” or comments begin feeling that they are worse than others and not so popular. There is no doubt that it makes teenagers experience different negative feelings.

Communicating virtually can cause teens to explore in a dangerous environment, most of the time allowing them to be a target of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a type of bullying that happens through the electronic devices and it can be both a text message and a Facebook message. According to Larissa (2014), might include different acts such as “impersonating a victim online or posting personal information, photos, or videos designed to hurt or embarrass another person”. Teens, who have been bullied in any way, usually run a greater risk of anxiety and depression in its worse way – suicide thoughts and attempts.

In spite of the fact that social networks help people to expand their communication and keep in touch with others, it does not make a person more sociable. People who can only talk to virtual “friends” are not considered to be communicative; it just means that they have problems with communication with real people. Furthermore, as it is said above, constant social media usage can increase risk of different diseases and one of them is a serious one – depression. 

References

Perrin, A. (2015). Social Media Usage: 2005-2015. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. 28 Nov. 2015.

Hirsch, Larissa. Cyberbullying. KidsHealth – the Web’s Most Visited Site about Children’s

Health. The Nemours Foundation, 1 June 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. 

For Further Research

As there is an immense quantity of information related to how social media can cause depression, I would like to recommend you some web pages which can tell you about the correlation between social media and depression as well. First one is a website called “Social Media May Lead to Teen Depression,” it describes the research which was led by people from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom how social media affects teens. They found that those teens “who were extremely active in social media are the ones who have the worst sleep quality and are vulnerable to anxiety and depression”. (Charissa 2015) Moreover, this article explains a new term “FOMO” which is defined as a fear of missing out what means that teens feel anxiety because are afraid of missing something important and interesting on social media. I think this website will explain some new information to you!

http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/7345/20150916/social-media-leads-depression-teens.htm

The second article which I think will interest you called “Is “Facebook Depression” For Real?””. As you already guessed, in this article it is said about the most popular social network Facebook which causes depression. According to Jennifer, Facebook makes teens feel unpopular because of “likes”, pictures, posts, status updates, and etc. Also, it has negative effects on tends and kids because they start to compare themselves with others on this social network. In a short word, Facebook causes depression indeed, and moreover, it affects more those teens that already have mental diseases. So, I’m pretty sure that this article will open to you something more new and interesting about such a social network as Facebook and its effects on children and teens.

http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/exc_080811.shtml

Finally, the third one is called “Stories of 7 Teen Suicides Because of Ask.fm bullying?” It sounds horrible, does not it? This website is different from others which I mentioned above. It contains different terrible stories of teens how they ended their life because of cyberbullying. It proves one more time how social media can be harmful for teens indeed. When you visit this website, you will see and read the stories which have the same end. I think, by visiting this website, it will make you think differently of social media, be more responsible for what you are saying on social networks and be able to warn others of it.

http://nobullying.com/stories-of-7-teen-suicides-because-of-ask-fm-bullying/

What the experts say II.

Recently, when I was researching for some unusual and interesting information about social media and its effects on teenagers, I found another blog called “33 Social Media Facts and Statistics You Should Know in 2015”. Talking about the correlation between social media and depression, we should certainly realize how social media statistics is amazing and how many people it involves in. That is why I think that the information that you could find on that blog will help you to better understand how many people use social networks, which social networks are the most popular and how many people they have as users. For example, according to that post on the blog, “there are just over 3 billion active Internet users (45% of the world’s internet users)” and “nearly 2.1 billion people have social media accounts”.

I hope, that the link which I left here to that post, will amaze you with its statistics and other different facts about social media and its users.

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2015/04/08/33-social-media-facts-and-statistics-you-should-know-in-2015/

What the experts say I.

There are so many websites where everyone can find any information they need for any topic. I’ve read a huge number of articles about how social media can cause depression. As an example, I found a quite interesting article called “Social Media and Suicide: A Public Health Perspective.”. This article has some really useful information about how depression in its worse way can be caused by constant usage of social media. According to David et al (2012), the Internet contains a lot of information about suicide which people can easily find and what can lead to their interest in suicide methods. Also, this article explains “different specific ways how social media can increase risk for prosuicide behavior”. One of them is cyberbullying which still remains the most known way of making people be disappointed and then experience depression.

Here is a link to the website where I found that article related to our theme in this blog. You can follow this link and read the article.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ 

Current event II

Another event that is related to the previous one that I mentioned above is the film called “Social Life” which is coming soon. The situation that happened to Essena made think a lot of people. The film which is being created by the producer Kerith Lemon is going to be about the girl who spends all the time on social media by posting different pictures, updating her status and just showing people how her life is perfect. But in actual fact, she is sitting at home and all she is doing is just choosing a picture to post on social media. Besides those pictures that she is taking for social media, she is also posting the old ones like “selfies” and etc to get more “likes” and comments.

According to Lemon, "A Social Life isn’t meant to be a cautionary tale to tell people how to live their lives. It is a mirror of...what is happening to me emotionally by being connected 24/7."

In the interview where she is sharing with other people about her ideas and why she decided to create this film, Lemon says she noticed that she started spending too much time with her device being online. She is interested in exploring women’s life, self-esteem and how they act on social media. It is sad that now self-esteem mostly depends on the attention that people get from other people on social media through the likes and comments they get.

The main idea of Lemon is to encourage people to stop being so addicted to social media, stop thinking of how many likes and comments they get and start living the  moment.

Here is the link to the trailer of “Social Life”, so you can watch it. Also, this website contains the information about this film and the interview with the producer Kerith Lemon. 

http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/how-fake-is-the-life-youve-curated-on-online-this-short-film-puts-social-media-depression-in-perspective/

Current event I

There are a huge number of cases when constant usage of social networks make teenagers and other people experience different negative emotions and feeling from sadness and disappointment to depression. Here I will tell you the short story about one girl, who was very popular on social media and recently decided to quit it. Essena O’Neill is the 19-year-old model, from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland had a huge number of followers on such well known networks as Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. She was posting a lot of pictures where her followers could see how beautiful and fashionable she was, what cool and brand clothes she wore. Before her “quitting” social media, she edited all the captions to her pictures on Instagram, explaining to her followers how she had taken every photo. Well, it is strange for everyone. I visited her blog and watched her videos to understand the reason she had left social media. Recently, right after “quitting social media” she posted an emotional video where she is explaining what her life was on social media indeed and how it is now and why she decided to end it. When she was 12, she was looking at many pictures of famous and beautiful models and then she decided that she would like to be as popular as they were. Now, she is 19. Only now, she realized that everything that she had on social media is nothing in her real one. She realized how fake her life was. She realized that all the years that she lost being always online, weren’t real. Now, she wants to change everything, think about who she is now and be with people not online, but in reality. She wants to be excited for the real things, but not for “likes” and how many followers she gets every day.

I think it is a very important message that she left. Now people who know about this event can think of their life more. This message encourages everyone to start living the moment and think about real things.

Here are the link to the website that has enough information about Essena O’Neill and her decision to quit social media. If you want to share your opinion with me and other people about this event and the problem in general, so you’re welcome to leave your comments!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3320431/Model-Essena-O-Neill-quit-Instagram-reveals-ways-dieted-internet-approval.html