How Social Media has Negatively Affected Our Social Skills Essay Example

that enables us to understand how individuals interact with one another and within society through meanings of symbols (Blumer, 1986). Though symbolic interactionism traces its origin from Max Weber, American philosopher George H. Mead introduced it.

The main reason for applying this perspective from the three perspectives is because of how its assumptions relate to social media. Interactionism Perspective focus on how people connect with others for a given reason, people may interact for career advancements, starting relationships, continuing relationships or something else. Symbolic interactionism states that we can find a meaning of a situation based by reflecting upon our actions through the eyes of others. One can determine how worthy is her or his action based on what is reflected in the eyes of others. Social media seem to alter the perspective of symbolic interactionism via retweets, replies and post comments. Researchers in the field of sociology use symbolic interactionism to study how social skills and social media influence each other.

Substantial Material

To demonstrate how social media is negatively affecting our social skills, I will pick peer relationships and communication to support my argument; social interaction is an important part in peer relationships and communication. The dawning of the current technological age has made it hard for young people to draw their distinction between social interaction and what is becoming commonly called lurking. On this portion of my paper, I choose to focus on adolescent relationships; this is because their correlation between their internet use and the effects as well as offline relationships if important due to their extensive use of the internet for social purposes. Lurking is explained as anonymously online social network searches to

get information about other people without their knowledge (Ramirez, Ramirez, Shuangyue, McGrew, & Lin, 2007). This practice of lurking does not coincide with the definition of social interaction. Again, the youth is spending much time online then time spent with family, this brings in the less social interaction between peers and their children hence affecting their social skills negatively and moral values. This also affects the family cohesion, the bonding towards each other.

It is argued that social media can lead to deeper, more intimate relationships and can lead to mental and emotional health improvement because children are constantly connected to friends and family. This is not the case; studies show that though social media leads to hyper-connectivity when children are connected and expected to connect it can lead to emotionally draining, which can lead to fear of losing someone if not connected or anxiety. When kids get ignored online or disconnected from the people they have constantly been connected to, it can lead to frustration, depression or hurt feelings. Some kids are shy and struggling socially; dependence on social media can make it much harder for such kids to do face to face communication. Social skills are skills, and they need practice.

Again, it is also argued that social media gives people time to think about a response instead of replying right away. This helps one to think through his or her words before sending something they might regret. Studies show that the above argument impacts negative effects on our social skills instead. Face to face conversations don't wait for one to think then reply; when somebody asks a question he or she expects the response

right away. A person will not have an opportunity the conversation and get back when they have the perfect response. For example, during an interview, one is required to think on his feet and respond appropriately. Thus social media is ruining our face to face communication skills.

Social media does not support nonverbal cues that we use so heavily during face to face interactions. Body language, facial expressions, a tone of voice and eye contacts are examples of nonverbal cues we use to engage in conversation. Social media is eliminating all this and when everyone is busy engaging in online communication, no opportunity to practice all these cues hence poor social skills. Social media is also argued to give kids more opportunities to communicate and practice social skills, right it does but not all social skills. Face to face communication skills lacks when someone spends much time communicating through devices. Social media limits the ability of a person to navigate spontaneous social interactions, for example, someone enters a bus and instead of chatting with someone next to him or her, he or she pulls out the cell phone to avoid the conversation. Kids don’t mostly have the experience to initiate conversations and maintain conversations. They can become dependent on phones for entertainment which can diminish their social skills.

Social media is argued that it can build confidence in teens by encouraging to connect with others, it can have exact or more opposite effects. It is evident that peer acceptance is very prominent to adolescents. Teens may connect with others in new ways; this also can bring new opportunities for them to feel either accepted or unaccepted by

peers. For example, an Instagram picture by a teen that gets a few "likes" can make a child feel unaccepted by peers, this can lower child's self-esteem dramatically, and this goes a long way to affect child’s social skills because he or she feels not fit to interact with other peers.

From Symbolic interaction theory, the formation of the self-image of an individual is directly related to their expectations, interpretations and response they get from other people. Social media more negative effects than standard media for the reason that teens and adults are not just looking at a response or an image, but engaging with others about it ("How Dieting Teens Stumble upon Unhealthy Images on Twitter," 2015). When people "like," "re-tweet" or “pin" images and responses on social media. They are not only attaching important meanings about how we should look and act. Instead, they are reinforcing these meanings as being important for success in our society. Adolescents are the most prone to this social media effect; they are often faced with pressure and unstable emotions. This creates dangerous dynamic interchange around the interpretations and meanings placed upon their social networking skills and experiences, mostly when the meanings attached to those experiences create negative self-worth (Roberts, 2000).

According to the symbolic interaction perspective education sociology, students and teachers interaction help each develop expectations for that student’s performance in both discipline and academic subjects. In particular, interaction theorists say that through the teacher expectancy effect, expectations of a teacher to performance or achievement influence the actual performance or achievement of that student. To relate this to the argument on social media, students stay on social media without

direct interaction with their teachers is leading to poor discipline and low academic performance.

A major area of concern among researchers is regarding on how social media is negatively affecting our social skills. Social media is a current phenomenon consisting of web-based communication among the internet users via websites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube) (Cheng, Dale & Liu, 2008). According to Facebook statistics, millions of users are active on a daily basis. Social media is dominating means of how people interact and communicate in the today’s society. The activity of passing information and interacting via social media is happening among people who are already familiar with each other as well as those who have never met in person. Due to increased introduction of computerized gadgets that aid social media communication and interaction, this is seen to alter handling and solving of tasks that have been well known to require face to face interaction and interpersonal skills (Rook, 1984).
Symbolic interactionism also referred to as symbolic interactionist perspective directs sociologists in considering details and symbols in everyday life, the meaning of these symbols and how people interact with one another (Larsen, & Wright, 1986). When people are sending their message, they attach meanings to symbols and act according to the interpretation of these symbols. Symbolic interactionism helps in supporting the argument by highlighting how social media is affecting our social skills negatively.

Over the past years, social media usage has reached all segments of the population across the world. Facebooking, texting, and tweeting are seen to be the most preferred form of interaction and communication among college students and young adults today. Both online and offline conversations and interaction

is seen to be denominated by the social media. According to Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr (2010), the society uses social media more than any other mode of communication to interact and communicate. Studies show that communication technology to be increasing exponentially within the generation and becoming the mainstay in our society.

This perspective on how social media has dominated the means of interaction and communication gives a point of reference on supporting the arguments how it has turned out to affect our social skills negatively. Though social media is seen to help in the passing of information widely within a short period, for example, if one wants to share information that needs to reach a big audience. One can post such information on a social media platform, social media is used as an advertising platform for many companies, despite all these advantages of social media it also has a major negative impact on our social skills (Boyd, 2014). According to research explained by a recent mass communications graduate of the University of South Florida, stated that social media is affecting our social skills in our society because social media reduces face to face interactions between individuals; this is particularly affecting college students because digital media constantly surround them.

According to the study done by online casino Yazino; One in every four people spend a lot of time socializing online than they do in-person. Even with an opportunity to do face to face interaction, some people prefer to stay at home and use their devices to communicate instead (Rainie, 2010). Research shows that word of mouth is more influential than an online communication; one cannot use or

learn nonverbal cues in a screen more effectively than he can do it in face to face communication (reeves, 2016).

Symbolic interactionism perspective assumption is that one's self-concept can be created through the interpretation of symbolic gestures, actions, appearances and words of people as they are observed during their social interactions (Kuhn, 1964). From this symbolic interactionism data, social media negatively affects these social skills, on social platforms like Facebook or instant messaging; one can’t use or interpret gestures, body language and reactions from the other person and as a result, the skills of using and understanding symbols are lowered.

In the pursuit to curb this social media addiction and improve our social skills, parents should play the biggest role in bringing up children who are socially responsible (Antis, 2013). They should set policies at home that work towards child social skills improvement. Parents need to model appropriate social skills to their kids as they grow up to become great people who can handle situations by applying social skills gain. Parents should practice these social skills with their kids; offer conversation starters and talking points. Practice with them the basic social skills like maintaining eye contact, handshakes, how to introduce themselves, speaking slowly and clearly and general conversation manners and politeness. Training children how to listen and respond appropriately can help boost their social skills.

Policy Implications

To bring up a society that upholds social values, it is solely the mandatory duty of parents to install sound social skills in their growing children. Opportunities should be provided to the youth to practice with others like during family gathering; this helps shy kids break out from their fear shells and

also gives more sociable kids chances to hone their skills. Guardians should set up expectations for cell phone, social media use, and internet as well as consequences for violating those consequences.

Another policy that can help boost our social skills is to establish technology free times and zones; family should set aside such times like during dinner to engage in face to face family conversations. Parents should set a good example of following this rules if they you are not adhering to your rules neither your kid will do. This teaches kids that there are time and place for technology and it should be balanced with the real world interaction. If someone has signs of loneliness or depression because of getting disconnected from someone on social media, hold a conversation with him or her, do something together to show him or her that he is not alone or unloved despite being ignored by social media.

Social media is creating a generation of cowards, people cannot initiate conversation, and people are shy and can’t handle issues in face to face interaction instead they are running to social media to post their messages, feelings, and thoughts (Shaefer, 2010). To improve our skills, we should model what it looks like to engage in spontaneous conversation. While at shopping malls and restaurants turn to the person seated next to you and engage him or her in a chat, whether political, technological or any relevant time that seem fit to both of you. Use facial expressions, body language, words and body language to respond to each other as well as read their reactions to know whether they are interested in your topic

of discussion.

Social media regulating body should filter all information posted on social sites that seem to deprive society of our social skills. First technology age usage should be set to prevent small kids from accessing social sites and get addicted to them.

Conclusion

With the evolving technological advancements, social media platforms are growing exponentially, and this poses the big threat to our social skills, policies set in place rescue our diminishing social skills seem not to work. Kids and adults are obsessed with the internet every single hour they are online chatting, posting images, re-twitting and connecting with new friends forgetting how this is affecting their social skills. Parents have neglected their responsibilities to impact the above practices on social skills to their children, but instead, they have provided their kids with the recent communication devices and unlimited high-speed network in their homes.

If correct measures and regulations aren't put in place to guard social media access in both schools and homes, then a generation that is about to come will experience a hard time in their interaction. Social media is robbing us our social skills, and this will continue to happen if not properly controlled.
According to my argument, it can be said that social media affects our social skills negatively; however, we cannot solely blame this sites for that, it is the choice of an individual to access this sites that turn to affect their social skills. Research also finds social media to have positive effects, for example; some people find it easier to communicate online away from in-person communication pressures. People should not look social media as their entire life but part of life; this can

help maintain healthy social life. First technology usage age is going down with children accessing the internet as young as eight years. Parents should block sites in home computers that might negatively affect their children.

References

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