It may “butcher” real-life conversations:
We can spend so much time interacting with people on social media—with "LOLs," "likes," "emojis," and "fast comments"—that we can find it more difficult to converse with them in person. According to Dr. Anastasiou, “people are spending less time meeting up in person and learning how to communicate both positive and negative feelings in a safe way.” “Instead, people are learning to rely on their emoji to convey their emotions and thoughts.” In-person interactions are undoubtedly messier and less linear, but they can also be more positive and bonding in the end.
It may make you worse at multitasking:
You might think you're a good multitasker if you're constantly checking your e-mail on your smartphone, then flipping to Instagram to scroll for a while, and then opening Snapchat to share what you're doing. In practise, managing multiple accounts and juggling your attention too frequently and rapidly impairs your ability to concentrate on multiple tasks. People who multitasked extensively on social media didn't perform as well as lighter media multitaskers in a number of cognitive domains, according to a 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although the researchers warn that more research is required, the biggest problems appear to be with tasks that need long-term goal-oriented attention. Dr. Anastasiou, who was not involved in this research, suggests turning off push alerts to avoid the temptation of constantly monitoring your social media pages.
It may disrupt your sleep:
Melatonin is a hormone that controls sleep in your body. Melatonin levels that are high can help you sleep, while those that are low can keep you awake. Although any type of light can reduce the amount of melatonin your body produces, blue light emitted from your smartphone's screen reduces your melatonin levels even more. Scrolling through social media late at night will throw off your circadian rhythms.
Despite of all these and many even being aware of the issues, we still are hooked to social medias, scrolling hours and hours, looking at memes with dead eyes and at our friends with envy.
I hope these two blogs help you realize how harmful social media is actually and if not anything then maybe reduce the time you spend on social media.
Do like the blogs if you enjoy reading them and want more such.
Feel free to comment what you'd like me to write about in the coming week, I'll try my best.
And do follow, I follow back too.
That'll be it for this week. Cheers!