Research on the effects of social media

While many people are using these types of social media platforms for communication and interaction purposes, others are using them for malicious intentions. However, using social media have been associated with a lot of negative effects on the individual and the general community. In this case, use of social media platforms is associated with an increase in the risk of cyberbullying, increase in health risk behaviors, decrease in academic achievement, trouble communicating at home, and compromising individuals' privacy. This topic has greatly interested me owing to the opinion that social media is starting to be viewed as a problem in the current community. Social media has led to an increase in cyberbullying. However, extreme use of social networking sites has led to growth in health risk behaviors to the users.

Using much time on this site can affect an individual's mood (Woods, p. In fact, one is likely to report mental related problems such as depression and anxiety. According to Woods, individuals have a tendency of engaging in specific interpersonal behaviors including excessive reassurance seeking an accounting for their greater likelihood of being rejected. Other social anxiety symptoms that can be triggered by excessive use of social media include becoming less assertive and avoiding conflict while expressing less emotion. This is based on the belief that they can perform two tasks simultaneously i. e. doing their assignments while at the same time social networking. In addition, many students even find themselves postponing doing assignments and find themselves in social media. While scholars believe that they are good at multitasking, research indicates that they perform academically at the lower level compared with those who do not multitask.

They look for an individual's information on social platforms such as Facebook to use it in a malicious manner. Some have even been conned and tricked through the sharing of their personal information such as bank accounts numbers resulting in massive loss of their property. Consequently, there are cases whereby individuals image has been destroyed resulting to denting their reputation. This is whereby an individual account, for instance, a Facebook account is hacked and the hacker uses the account to post undesirable posts for example insults and nude's images. The main idea behind the creation of the social media platforms was to help people socialize and network and at the same time obtain information with the majority of users having social media accounts.