Social Media(an argument)

Is Virtual World of Social Media Marring the Real Existence of People?
Name of Student
Name of University

The magnum world of internet is pioneered by Google and they introduced people all over the world with the term ‘chat’. They showed how geographical barriers were nothing in the line of communication. It cost very nominal in comparison to telephonic interaction. Youth got swept away by this innovation in communication and started to befriend with people whom they never saw or would never see. This is how social media started its journey. However, the history of online chat began way back in 1980s with Talkomatic invented by David R Wolley and Doug Brown (Mano, 2014). Many times passed in between and social media has got redefined heavily. In fact, social media now is not limited to personal chat but it has been broadened into as a mass sharing channel. Facebook, Tweeter, Instagram and many others have given a new meaning to the personal expression. In short, a parallel world or living is going on simultaneously with the real ones. Now the question is being raised regarding the worth and value of this parallel or the virtual world as now it has become more viable than the real behaviour of human beings. This essay will focus on a comparative study between the speedy communication via social media and its overshadowing impacts on the real identities of human beings.
The key feature of social media is that it is global and just being on a social networking site a person can become a part of a heterogeneous fraternity.

In terms of communication, it is undeniably a boon to mankind but at the same time it has put a question mark on the viability of the identity of a person (Matyjas, 2015). Identity in the virtual world of social media is merely a photograph or a name that are again subject to the choice or preference of the users. A few decades ago, there used to be study circles or forums based on a particular interest in the society where meeting is a significant part of communication. Knowing people by their appearance, voice, behaviour and attitude used to generate a sense of trust and closeness among people. However, for group whose members were diffused throughout the world, this kind of communication was very difficult to arrange frequently. This problem is completely resolved by the advent of social media but this mode of communication adheres to a sense of gap in communication.
Cyber crime is a severe bane of social media. The wicked minds always look for the cracks to take undue advantage of any technological innovation. Sin and Kim, (2014) have stated that fake identities are created over social media to trap innocent people especially teenagers and women to harm or molest and the rate of this crime is increasing day by day. Hackers are unethically accessing real social media profiles either to steal one’s personal information or to damage the honour of a particular person. However, to beat these issues, social media networking sites are also working hard to ensure privacy of their users.
Building networks is a very useful advantage found in social media. The virtual business has become very popular and innovative to run a business globally and the employees usually belong to different regions of this world along with having no real office. According to Sriwilai and Charoensukmongkol (2015), with the help of instant messengers of social media employees of a virtual business can connect and interact with each other at any point of time and no fix office hours provides the employees to work more freely and in an enhanced way. Apart from that, youths are the dominating users of social media. They spend much of time most of the time to exhibit themselves in public or among their friends (rather friend list). There are many educative pages and groups available in social media where youths can directly communicate or get updates regarding the subject. Likewise, there are many unethical, violent and abusive pages that are detrimental to the vulnerable minds of young adults.
Coming to another concerning outcome of social media is social alienation. Aftershocks of world wars had disillusioned people all over the world regarding their fragile and temporary existence and alienated them from each other and social media connects people virtually and the connection is so strong that family and friends matter very little to them (Mano, 2014). These are the pieces of evidence of how real people are getting overshadowed by the virtual world and its population. Nevertheless, due to social communal integrity, many social issues such as violence on women, child abuse, and human exploitations are getting compassionate supports via social media. Viral posts and videos of concerning issues are creating strong impact in human mind irrespective of space, place, age and gender and someone is able to empathize someone without knowing his/her background. The world is full of problems related to social, political, cultural, communal or environmental which have been so far neglected or undiscovered but with the help of social media those are getting attention and hope to be resolved.
Physical existence has become secondary in social media and whether it is good or bad is very relative. The children living far away can communicate frequently and very easily with their parents via video chat and physical distance does not seem that much painful to them. On the contrary, an underage or overage can very easily fake his/her identity to fool people. Matyjas (2015) reminiscing his old days has said that at least their chitchat or activities were never affected by server down as nowadays happens. The human mind is organic and it is becoming mechanical due to technologies like social media but technologies are invented by human beings to ease out the complications human life. The internet or social media may have some protocols but there are some points where the virtualization is becoming outrageous and uncontrollable. It is true that hypocrisy is getting fuelled well by social media. Besides, most of the people use social media to project themselves or their life as they want others to perceive which sometimes quite different and contrasting from reality.
This paper has argumentatively analyzed all aspects and features of social media. It has become inseparable from human life but to keep that unaffected from the negativity of social media people first should accept and understand the points where social media is overshadowing their real physical life and existence. Considering the higher rate of maltreatment of this technological boon, people must draw a bold line to limit the influence of social media. However, as the topic tells, it is true that to a very fair extent, the virtual world of social media is marring the real existence of people. In this case, social media can be a very useful mean to raise awareness over the negative impacts of it.

References
Mano, R. (2014). Social media, social causes, giving behavior and money contributions. Computers In Human Behavior. 31, 287-293.
Matyjas, B. (2015). Mass Media and Children. Globality in Everyday Life. Procedia – Social And Behavioral Sciences. 174, 2898-2904.
Sin, S., and Kim, K. (2014). Impacts of social media usage on the outcomes of students’ everyday life information seeking. Proc. Am. Soc. Info. Sci. Tech. 51(1), 1-4.
Sriwilai, K., and Charoensukmongkol, P. (2015). Face it, don’t Facebook it: Impacts of Social Media Addiction on Mindfulness, Coping Strategies and the Consequence on Emotional Exhaustion. Stress Health. 16(5), 278-280.