Is Social Media Messing with your Brain?

How much time you spend on social media? And how much time you spend talking with others face-to face? Do you think social media is changing the way we interact and we fell about ourselves? David Disalvo investigates these issues in his article “Are Social Networks Messing with Your Head? The author explains that social media is changing the way people think about the internet, and also the way how we are, how we feel about ourselves and about others. Most people use the web pages and the internet to escape from their real lives, to get away from their loneliness but then ended with different problems such as self-esteem issues, narcissism and addictions; leading them to more depression and anxiety. People who are afraid of face-to face contact have encounter in social media the way to overcome their fears; a new way of meet people and make new friends. The biggest issue with this new tendency is that people is loosing the ability to talk to each other; to make friends talking with strangers and to solve their problems in person. The tendency between teenagers is to use the technology and the social media for everything. For them is easier to text, post or tweet their problems, their desires, their goals, their activities and their wishes than to sit down and have a nice chat with their peers. The social media is also transforming into an addiction or as Disalvo called it an “unhealthy attachment”; people are spending so many hours in Facebook, Twiter or Linkeding and many are getting in trouble because of this addiction. A Nielson Online reports that 70 millions Facebook users spend 233 millions hours on the site in April 2009. Most of these hours were spend during work-time costing to the companies 1.5 percent of total office productivity. I am guilty of checking my Facebook profile more than I should do it. I have spent plenty of hours scrolling up and down the screen. I have noticed that people use it for everything; from expressing their feelings and moods to the food and the clothing they are wearing. I think if you learn to balance your online interaction with your real life interaction, you can have the best of both worlds.