Positive and Negative effects of Social media on Family time | Dr. Amrita Vohra

Do Cell Phones and Social Media Make Family Relationships Stronger? How do cell phones and social media have a positive impact on family relations?

Cell phones have also evolved into powerful machines that can be used to socialize with people around the globe. These technological services were mostly introduced to help make human life better and they did that to a great extent.

How cell phones and social media have a negative impact on family relations? Why Too Much Cell Phone Usage Can Hurt Your Family Relationships? 

Social media frequently receives blame for many issues in our society. Often, such blame is justified. After all, the rise of social media correlates with the rise of a lot of pretty lousy things.If it were a larger outcry and movement against it would likely have already arisen. Furthermore, when you read tirades against social media, where, might I ask, do you most frequently read them? If the answer for you isn’t on social media itself, then you’re in the minority on this one.
The effects of social media deserve closer scrutiny through a balanced lens. So, right out front, I have no axe to grind with social media or social media companies. Many of the negative effects of social media, while specific to social media, are symptoms, not diseases. Furthermore, those symptoms point not to social media, but to larger societal issues. As for the positive effects of social media, they essentially show the power of technology and the community at large. Whatever it comes down to in the end, social media seems a durable part of our world. Coming to grips with what it all means deserves our attention.

Negative
Social media, according to a report done The Independent UK, tends to affect psychology negatively in the 5 following areas.

1. Self Esteem: Constantly comparing your real life to the manufactured presentations on social media takes its toll. Most people don’t talk about real things, and when they do they glamorize or self-aggrandize. Taking social media for reality, as our brains tend to do, harms your own self-image.
2. Human Connection: While social media allows for connection with a vaster group with a shared interest, real-life human connection matters. People isolate themselves more and more, and social media is part of the problem. Without genuine, in-person human connection, many struggle with greater rates of depression.
3. Memory: Unendingly refreshing your feed, filling your brain with everyone’s posts, then resetting to fill up on more hurts your memory. Social media even, in some cases, negates memory’s role in our lives. For example, there is no need to remember birthdays thanks to Facebook. It helps us not forget, but it does not help us remember.
4. Sleep: Social media makes it harder to shut your mind off. If you tend to overuse social media during the day, when the night comes you can’t just shut it off. Your mind will compel you to check just once more. This puts you into mindless scrolling mode. Before you know it, it’s 2 am, and you have to get up in 4 hours for work.

Attention Span: If you find something dull or otherwise unengaging on social media, what do you do? You scroll past it, you unfollow the page, you get the post out of view, move on to something else. Doing this constantly creates a poor attention span feedback loop. The more you do it, the worse it gets.

 Positive

Harvard Scientists conducted a study looking into 3 psychological health outcomes related to social media use. They found that social media itself did not cause poor psychological outcomes. Rather, the user’s relationship with social media informed psychological results. For users who took part in social media as a part of a daily routine, with regular interaction, but did not do so obsessively, they had positive outcomes. For those who used it out of need, with more addictive relationships with social media, they had negative outcomes. Consider the following examples of positive relationships with social media.

1. A grandmother who lives far from her children and grandchildren. Without social media, the busy lives they lead would prevent regular contact and interaction. Through following her children and grandchildren, the grandmother can stay connected to her family until their next visit.
2. An exchange student in a new country, on a new continent. Such students cannot always afford to keep in direct contact with friends and family. Time differences, financial costs, and everyday busyness get in the way. Through social media, such exchange students, their families, and friends sustain close and essential relationships with one another across vast differences and through long stretches of time.