Allen, in the article, explains the growing impact of social media in the everyday life of users, which has significantly increased over the last fifteen years from 5 percent of the adult population using social media platforms to seventy percent in the year 2019. Social media usage does impact relationships due to its connectivity and socialization feature that does not require in-person presence. However, usage of social media technology tends to increase in-person interaction due to its instant connectivity benefits. Social Media plays a critical role in virtual connectivity that reshapes relationships in recent times, and supplements in-person socialization with alternative modalities through the adaptation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in daily life for social interaction.
Social displacement is the phenomenon of replacing face-to-face time with time consumed on technology, especially in modern-day usage of social networking platforms. However, the phenomenon is a hundred years old, and technologies like postal letters and telephones have raised concerns in their respective boom period for eating away face-to-face time. Allen, on the other hand, argues that social media is not adversely affecting relationships because technology provides new and different forms of socialization, which indicates social displacement does not occur. Evidence from data suggests that phone calls, texts, in-person time, and emails are all modalities of social interaction, and meaningful interactions with closed ones occur almost the same way. Concern for the well-being of an individual often results in fear of the unknown, and that is a human’s basic instinct.
The evidence also suggests that there is a positive relationship between social media usage and in-person social interaction. Allen provides evidence that teens one year before entering college tend to spend significantly more time when compared with a similar age group from the 1980s, which precisely reveals the positive impact of virtual connectivity and communication on in-person interactions. Digital media use among teens is high, and it allows them to create a social networking culture that is unique in its own way. One distinctive aspect of the relationship is the benefits of social networking through networking sites in eliminating the physical barrier of utilizing resources to locate someone’s current location.
The associated risks of social media usage, especially within the teenage group, are in the form of cyberbullying and exposure to inappropriate content, combined with adverse effects on cognition. Although social connectivity strengthens with social media, which creates a creative outlet for the user, the incidence of bullying suggests almost thirteen percent cyberbullying cases in the teenage group. Additionally, access to inappropriate content in the form of pornography, violent, and extremist images is the risk to which social media exposes everyone at a certain level because of the diversity of users and content across social networking sites.
There is the potential benefit of using social networking sites as a method of creative self-expression, but there are risks associated with the expansion of social networks. The risks include inappropriate content like pornography, images of violence, and cyberbullying. Allen provides evidence that a significant proportion of the teenage population reports coming across content that is homophobic, racist, sexist, and hate-based content. The reported cyberbullying incidence in the teenage population, at least once, is in the double-digit, ’13.’ At the cognitive level, risks of adverse effects are evident in the offline world and in physical terms. One of the common concerns for higher screen time on social media results in core issues of intimacy, sexuality, and identity.
Social media networking is an everyday reality of modern lifestyle, and it allows enormous opportunities to gain and send information that ensures a sustainable and healthy online culture. On the one hand, research highlights the positive impact of social media usage and in-person interaction. On the other hand, Social media networking sites create issues of internal conflict in the form of sexuality, identity, intimacy, etc. Overall, social media technology has a positive effect on the lives of people, but every technological change that influenced communication has created some sort of social displacement. However, social displacement is a myth, and it is actually the change and evolution of culture due to technological factors, which has its pros and cons.
References
Allen, Summer. “Social Media’s Growing Impact on Our Lives.” American Psychological Association, 20 Sept. 2019, www.apa.org/members/content/social-media-research.
