“When you start to miss me remember;
you were the one who made me cry,
broke my heart,
turned your back and let me go.”
Ever since the beginning of time, people have communicated with each other in a variety of ways. In this day and age, we utilize social media to communicate. By using social media, we have access to information, friends, reduced communication barrier, and the opportunity to advance one's own life. The infectious internet pages are so great that they even save lives. On November 14th, 2013, NBC news released an article about a suicidal 18 year old who typed on his Facebook: “I am thinking about jumping” “and attached photos of the famed bridge that spans the Hudson River between Fort Lee, N.J., and Manhattan”. One of his Facebook friends saw this and contacted the police. They got ahold of a veteran cop on duty named Lt. Thomas Michaels and his partner named Sgt. Nadine Rhem. After hearing the story, they reached out to the boy on Facebook and convinced him to stop and get help. Two hour later, a call came in and it was the kid who posted the suicide statement. They talked and the cop made a deal to have another cop go with him to the hospital to get an evaluation. For this person, social media saved his life, but not all are so lucky. Some catch a mental virus so destructive that others can’t save them, some reach out but only find disobliging, and some reachout only to find an empty room full of despair. Although its communication purposes are beneficial, social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, is a catastrophic plague on our society. Those who catch this digital plague soon see many symptoms including, addiction, poor self-esteem, failed relationships, cyber bullying, and, in some cases, death.
My friend on Facebook named Jason Heiden wrote, “If Facebook isn’t a drug then someone please explain to me why I sneak into the bathroom at work to use it”? Social media compulsion is like a perpetual malady. No matter how hard you try to cure it, it won’t go away completely. But why do people have such of an addiction to social media. Well for Kim Stolz, “habitually checking in on all of her friends and love interests on social media was natural”. Like everyone else, the distraction of being on your phone is entertaining. Maybe that's what was so addicting about social media, it’s a distraction from your own life. Facebook is so distracting that as I am typing this, my Facebook notification went off and I spent 30 minutes procrastinating on it. Another addiction of social media is “constantly checking Facebook status updates or “stalking” people’s profiles on Facebook, for hours on end”. Most people do this because they need to be a control freak and know what they are doing 24/7. It’s a fact that social media is “ harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol” (addiction ). Another part of why it’s so hard to resist it is the bragging. We all have those friends that post pictures or comments on Facebook that makes them look like the king or queen of the world. They post Pictures of their fancy new car while you just crashed your. They brag and brag until you get fed up and post a mean comment starting a virtual war. After a while, that war is brought up into the real world and you lose a life long friend.
Social media destroys relationship with loved ones. Remember reading about Kim Stolz earlier? We talked about her addiction to Facebook, but not how it ruined her relationship with her boyfriend. Kim was very flirtatious while chatting guy friends on her Facebook. Eventually, her boyfriend saw the things she and her friends where writing . He immediately broke up his serious relation with Kim, breaking her heart. We all hear about friends hating each other because of something they posted on Facebook. Well I heard of something similar happening to three people I once knew. Devyin and Marcus were great friends. Marcus like Devyin’s nemesis, Jillian, picture on Facebook and Devyin exploded. She stopped talking to Marcus after that for about a year, all because of a like. A single click of a mouse ended their friendship.
American’s forget that you are supposed to post your status on Facebook, not your diary. Social media has no privacy. All you have to do is type in someone's name into the search bar and you can see everything they have done that isn’t set to private. You could also see information like where you work, where you live, email, and even your phone number. An additional aspect of no privacy is that any one can read what you post. Nick McGillivray, an attendee of crown college, said that “21% of teens say it is safe to post personal information, including photos, online to a public profile”. These kids don't understand that deranged sociopaths can creep on their photos and stalk their lives.
Social media also has many miscellaneous symptoms. One is that you lose sleep because of it. Teenagers alone spend more than 20 hours a week online on Facebook. Most of that time is spent online is at night. When teenagers see something interesting, we lose track of time and end up spending hour on end looking up profiles until we see the clock reads 2 in the mourning. Also, there are many fakes and liars on social media. On September 14th, 2014, Jake Flanagin told the story of how Zilla van der Born spent about 5 weeks on vacation in southeast Asia. She posted pictures of all the activities she participated in on Facebook so everyone could see what she was doing. So what's so fake about that, sounds pretty normal right? Wrong! Zilla actually spent 5 week at home photoshopping images and faking her vacation. She did it to “show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media”. This fakecationing of well made photos made everyone truly believe she was on vacation. Other ways people fake things on social media is making a fake account. Any one can make a fake account and pass it as their own. All they need is a picture and a googled image of a persons face. When you see the friend request pop up, they look like the real person you know but are really a fake trying to hurt you.
Another symptom of the digital plague is bullying, but not the school kind. The kind where can happen anywhere: cyber bullying. According to No Bullying, a leading site against cyber bullying, more than 52% of kids under 18 have reported being cyber bullied , 55% have witnessed cyber bullying, and that cyber bullying concern has raised to 82% in 2013. No Bullying also wrote that it more likely for boys to be targeted by antagonists than girls but it’s still probable for them to be picked on and that “the most common types of cyber bullying tactics reported are mean, hurtful comments as well as the spreading of rumors“. This is what happen they did to 13 year old Megan Meier. Megan, a normal 13 year old girl who loved the water, music, animals, and ,of course, boys, had just rejoined the world of myspace. In time, she got a friend request from an attractive older gentlemen named Josh Evans. Even though she has never personally meet him face to face (no way he’s is fake she probably thought) accepted his friend request. They talked for awhile and then, on October 15, 2006, catastrophe struck. Megan received a message from Josh saying, “ "I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends”. The next day, Meg returned home from school and logged onto MySpace. Her so called friends where despicable things like slut, fat, and every other malevolence statement known to humanity. When Tina , Meg’s mother, returned home, she talked to a stressed Megan. Tina was furious that Meg fueled the fire by commenting lewd words back to the intimidators; while at the same time, Megan was yelling at her mother about not being on her side. Feeling like her mother agreed with what they were posting on Myspace (probably ruining their relationship with each other), Megan shouted off a discourteous comment to her mom and stormed to her bedroom. Later, Tina had a dreadful feeling that something was wrong. Tina swiftly flew to Megan's room where she saw what no mother wants to see. Megan died from hanging herself from the closet door. The last social media message she received, before she did the unthinkable, was from her “friend” Josh cyber bullying her by saying that , “Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you”.
This evil, malicious, social media user, stygian hearted sixteen year old criminal named Josh Evan’s robbed Tina of her daughter by using a social media website that anyone has access to. Or should I say this jealous, selfish, emotionless, cold hearted ex-friend of Megan, her mothers other employees, and her own mother used cyber bullying to murder Meg. Social media is a digital plague on our society. This plague, that any person of any race, age, or class can be infected with , is spreading to every human being on the planet. Affecting them every single time they log-in. The virus slowly spreads, twisting their heart until there’s Nothing, left to cry for. Nothing, left to hope for. Nothing, left to live for.
This evil, malicious, social media user, stygian hearted sixteen year old criminal named Josh Evan’s robbed Tina of her daughter by using a social media website that anyone has access to. Or should I say this jealous, selfish, emotionless, cold hearted ex-friend of Megan, her mothers other employees, and her own mother used cyber bullying to murder Meg. Social media is a digital plague on our society. This plague, that any person of any race, age, or class can be infected with , is spreading to every human being on the planet. Affecting them every single time they log-in. The virus slowly spreads, twisting their heart until there’s Nothing, left to cry for. Nothing, left to hope for. Nothing, left to live for.
