The popularity of social media is increasing over time among people of different ages. However, exposing personal information to social media websites brings risks.
It is clear to me that social media is becoming more harmful and presents many disadvantages that outweigh the advantages. Some of these disadvantages are addiction and health problems.
Starting with addiction problem, social media applications are becoming more and more attractive to people who spend hours every day surfing social media, especially the young ones. This is considered a serious concern as this might destroy young people’s lives because of extensive time wasting instead of studying and improving their skills that are essential for overcoming life’s challenges. To prove this point, researchers from Oxford University conducted a study in 2019 to highlight the social media addiction risk on children. The study included students from a school located in London and stated that, among every three children who spend more than two hours on social media daily, two of them scored low marks in 2019. Therefore, social media addiction can dramatically destroy children’s abilities.
In addition to addiction, social media can cause health problems when people spend hours scrolling social media apps, which can lead to headache and eye pain. This is true because devices’ screens emit light that causes eye strain. This effect has been under study for years. One of these studies has been done in a health center in Germany. Fifty volunteers have participated in this study and have asked to use their phones one hour. After that, volunteers’ eyes have been examined, and the result was 40 volunteers suffered from eye strain and headache. Thus, social media has a direct effect on physical health because of exposure to screen light for a long time.
In conclusion, social media no doubt has more disadvantages, especially addiction and health problems, that outweigh its advantages.