Introduction
The XXI century is the era of information, digitalization, and numerous technological discoveries which are changing people’s lives daily. Individuals increasingly use the latest scientific and technological progress achievements in everyday life: smartphones, personal computers, smart gadgets for the home, and other valuable advancements. People can no longer imagine their daily lives without electronic devices. Furthermore, another critical element of modern realities is the global network, allowing everyone to perform an incredible variety of diverse tasks. Viewing the news, purchase goods, accessories, paying taxes and fees, and even digital learning has become possible due to the World Wide Web. Hence, in the age of digitalization, people are increasingly choosing virtual communication on the Internet over personal meetings.
Communication occurs through e-mail, social networks, and messengers, which provides one limitless possibility for contact with other individuals. However, there is a belief that these connections have become a mere formality rather than a necessity. Nevertheless, this statement cannot be considered valid because, in addition to the negative aspects, the Internet has enriched the lives of everyone. An individual in the modern world cannot exist without social networks, despite their cons, they allow being in contact, feel confident, develop, and get acquainted, expanding the boundaries of the social world.
The Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media
In order to assess the impact of social media on society, it is necessary to assess their positive and negative sides. First of all, social networks provide people with limitless opportunities for communication, for which the 21st century leaves almost no time. The primary purpose of social networks is to communicate with friends, relatives, and previously unfamiliar people, regardless of the distance separating the interlocutors. People find friends of interest, share photos and videos, and share them on the public domain for comments, which undoubtedly enriches their social life (Auxier & Anderson, 2021). A big plus of such networks is that everyone can assemble a team of friends and communicate privately in one’s narrow circle. Most of these services provide the ability to make voice and video calls over the Internet with anyone, no matter where they are.
Moreover, social networks allow people to develop comprehensively: one can watch any interesting artistic or popular scientific film, listen to music, read any book, learn to play the guitar, study a foreign language, do yoga or learn how to dance. Moreover, social networking sites are a great place to start a business. One can advertise a bookstore, a new restaurant, or a cab service for free, which allows doing the business known not only to a narrow circle of friends but likewise to the majority of the inhabitants of the city or even the country (Auxier & Anderson, 2021). It is not a complete list of the positive facts associated with the impact of social media on life.
However, there are also negatives, including the fact that they create an accessible platform for self-expression, automatically turning everything into a game. Social networks are associated with a playing field, where the player’s corporeality, social status, age, gender, and financial well-being disappear, making the average person feel like a player, equal to others on this field (Zhuravskaya et al., 2020). In this case, it is possible to lie slightly, exposing oneself as someone else, to limit and not specify to the end information about themselves, to embellish reality.
Social networks are gradually reborn as mirrors, reflecting not the actual image of the individual but the desired one. Looking out during communication from behind a mask, a person feels safe, thinking that one is successfully disguised that no one under any circumstances can recognize one, which allows entering into various connections, showing as an expert in all fields of science and art. In contrast, an awareness of these fields is limited to superficial knowledge.
Social networks are likewise convenient for self-expression because they do not condemn human weaknesses and sometimes even promote them. The function of self-expression is most strongly realized in such services as blogging and photo-reporting because they provide the best opportunity to realize oneself as a creative person without experiencing the difficulties arising in the creative process or the positive impressions of success (Cinelli et al., 2020). The eyes see creativity as universal recognition and fame but, in no way, as hard work. Nevertheless, the arena of the typical social network allows the average person to become an artist, a writer, a composer, or a director. One is easily able to find those people who will appreciate creativity.
To accomplish this, one only needs to join the group of several other users, lavishing praise on the creative work of one of those mentioned above. After that, expect a pleasant response to the work and oneself. Perhaps this can be seen as a positive trend as people are not afraid and do not want to be passive observers; they are ready to show joint creative activity and show themselves.
Social Networks as a Form of Enrichment of Social Life
It is evident that in modern society, the role of social networks is steadily increasing since one of their main features is interactivity and freedom from vertical power. It is possible to list even more essential and useful features of these social media which make them relevant. For example:
- the capacity to carry out social, political, legal, and agitation activities, containing feedback mechanisms;
- the ability to respond quickly to citizens’ requests, coming directly through the social network;
- the power to influence political and social processes in society;
- the capacity to highlight political leaders; open access to social and political materials, to administrative documents found.
At the moment, social networks are gradually becoming a new social institution, with all its features and specific characteristics inherent only in these web services, uniting entire regions, countries, and continents on one page. Among the reasons, referring social networks to a new social institution, it is possible to allocate the presence of a specific structure and organization of a network, a standard function for all social institutions – satisfaction of needs of society (Auxier & Anderson, 2021). Moreover, possibility of regulation of social processes occurring within a network, the presence of social groups and organizations, called to satisfy needs of individuals; possibility of realization of economic activities within a network should likewise be mentioned.
Furthermore, social networks offer a variety of content that includes the challenges and difficulties faced by people from all cultural societies. In this area, social media helps teens increase their awareness and encourages empathy. Remarkably often, people see help for those who need it by trying to raise awareness on social media. Before the advent of the Internet with all of its resources, society drew information from television screens and, before that, from newspapers, which at one time were in high demand and were the primary source of information.
However, nowadays, the Internet has pushed out other media because it provides the user with a passive viewer who receives information with an unavoidable delay due to its processing and gives the possibility of free access to vast amounts of information. It is not that some event is happening somewhere that one needs to know about as soon as possible because the event itself is information. Information obtained in real-time, that is, simultaneously with the event’s timing, means that the event is happening everywhere at the same time (Henzel & Hakansson, 2021). Suppose the same event is happening everywhere at the same time. In that case, it means that no other events are happening simultaneously (at least in the circle of experience of the recipients of the information).
Real-time information means that information recipients fall out of everyday life’s circle and move into virtual informational reality. Therefore, the traditional structure of the world has changed, and people exist supra-spatially. They are now connected to the interlocutor, unlike before to the territory (Cinelli et al., 2020). As a result of the mutual penetration of cultures, a continuous exchange of cultural values, and almost instantaneous distribution of information, a person unconsciously becomes a citizen of the world. Social media is more than just communication, and it is a separate new reality that offers limitless possibilities (Orben et al., 2019). It can be considered a new social world, which is undoubtedly an enrichment of life. After all, it is now that the individual feels greater freedom to make decisions to influence his destiny and that boundaries are losing their meaning altogether.
Research on the Impact of Social Media on the Social Life
At least once in their life, each individual faced the statement that social networks have a detrimental effect on real social life and make one communicate less. There is an opinion that the time spent on social networks directly affects how much of this time remains for real life, but this statement cannot be considered accurate. Two contemporary studies on the subject were recently published, both conducted at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, USA (Eraslan & Kukuoglu, 2019). Researchers from this university decided to test the so-called social displacement theory, which states that the more time one spends in the social media world, the less time one can spend with people in the real world.
It applies to the passive use of social media such as mindless scrolling at a house party and active interaction as texting, commenting, and posting. Social displacement theory likewise argues that this reduction in social interaction has the potential to make people unhappy or, using scientific language, lead to a reduction in human well-being. Nevertheless, two studies at the University of Kansas tested this theory, and the results were published in the Information, Communication & Society journal. Researchers used data collected in the Longitudinal Study of American Youth in the first study from 2014 to 2019 (Eraslan & Kukuoglu, 2019). They examined whether there was a relationship between social media use and direct social contact, defined as leaving home, talking to friends, talking on the phone, or participating in any form of group activity.
The study’s participants mostly belonged to Generation X. It is significant to state that during the rapid introduction of social media and extreme changes in the online space, there was no sudden decrease in people’s direct social contacts. In the second study, researchers interviewed 116 people about their use of social media and direct social contacts five times a day for five consecutive days (Henzel & Hakansson, 2021). The results confirmed the ones of the previous study. Social media users did not experience social displacement. If they used social media in the first half of the day, it did not cause them to be lonely in the second half of the day. Thus, the scientists failed to confirm the theory of social displacement. It does not mean that excessive use of social media is a good thing, but it also does not indicate a lack of live communication (Orben et al., 2019). Today social media replaces other ways of getting information, including traditional newspapers or news sites, without interfering with social life.
Conclusion
From the above, it can be concluded that it is impossible to imagine modern life without social networks. One cannot be definite about the fact that social networks only bring benefits or harm only. There are both narrowly focused social networks, which can be helpful for business purposes, and multi-user, with great functionality, providing both business purposes and entertainment. Consequently, the impact of social networks on society is very diverse and ambiguous, and the impact on a particular individuals depends on their subjective qualities. However, it is likewise evident that social networks do not make social life poorer; on the contrary, they introduce a lot of diversity. Social networks provide limitless opportunities for communication, allow people to participate in social life, and even create new social institutions. Numerous research studies prove that socializing online does not lead to detachment from reality. Considering all of the above, it can be stated that one should approach the use of social networks wisely in order to be able to make the most of them and reduce the negative consequences.
References
Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center, 1, 1-4.
Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., Valensise, C. M., Brugnoli, E., Schmidt, A. L., & Scala, A. (2020). The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-10. Web.
Eraslan, L., & Kukuoglu, A. (2019). Social relations in virtual world and social media aggression. World Journal on Educational Technology: Current Issues, 11(2), 1-11.
Henzel, V., & Hakansson, A. (2021). Hooked on virtual social life. Problematic social media use and associations with mental distress and addictive disorders. PloS One, 16(4), 406. Web.
Orben, A., Dienlin, T., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(21), 10226-10228. Web.
Zhuravskaya, E., Petrova, M., & Enikolopov, R. (2020). Political effects of the internet and social media. Annual Review of Economics, 12, 415-438.