Social media: in sickness and in health.

With the popularity of social media vastly expanding everyday, common attitudes of students are seemingly anything but social. Sadly, people are forgetting to incorporate moderation. Too much of anything is bad. That being said, there are good and bad aspects of social media. One must simply distinguish the positive and negative affects of having all the information you can, and cannot handle, all in the palm of your hand.

“Social media has its ups and its downs,” said Alex Hagar, 22, pre-med student. “I try to not spend too much time on it.”

This is wise, for the concept of social media is revolutionary and effective. They would not dub us the age of information if it wasn’t. From getting connected, to exploring new information, social media has done wonders for the world.

The problem is that some people are having a hard time filtering out positive and negative information. Endlessly injecting text, pictures, and six-second videos, that are more or less nonfactual, into your mental intellect can take a toll on your brain after extended use. But that is not the point. What is obvious is a complex. The “Instagram Famous” complex, which, in turn, is a mindset that consists of believing that the more well-known you are on social media, the more outstanding you are as a person in real life. This way of thinking makes people feel dominant over one another. It has changed the way people get to know each other, and from the looks of things, that is for the negative.

There is a standard that social media infects its users with. How to act, what to say and what to do is all predetermined for you through popular opinionated posts and memes. In select situations, this is not a factor, but for some, if you do not fit social media definition of “cool” you are an outcast. If you aren’t talking about what is on everyone’s wall, nobody is interested.

It seams that social media is making people socially inept. When meeting someone new online, things are simple. Before the first conversation even starts, you have an image of what this person is going to be like based off of their profile. This in itself is negative. getting to know someone should consist of real, face-to-face conversation that involves emotion and instincts.

What it all comes down to is choice. Everyone has a choice in how they want social media to effect their lives. We as independent people do not have to dress and act according to what we saw on our wall this morning. We have the option to incorporate emotion. So why avoid it?