English Controlled Assessment – Brogan Hardy
Why Social Media Is An Awful Form Of "Interraction"
We are the guinea pigs of social media. We are the ones that had disgusting screen names for our AIM profiles, a "top 8" on My Space that we probably never talk to, and now Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have become vital parts of our day to “connect” with other people. It’s fun; we all know that. Who doesn’t love wasting precious hours of their day looking at what other people are doing and staying in the know with others?
Social media can be social but it depends on the influence of others in your life and the influence you have on theirs. This is what scares me about this "social" platform, it is based on others rather than yourself. What social media is essentially doing is turning us into robots that are constantly worrying about what we look like to others.
Social media can become a dark obsession that looms over us in an unsettling way, recently an dreadful event happened far too close to comfort where a young girl of 8 was beaten to death by her mother and psychotic girlfriend Kiki Muddar. Muddar, 43 was caught up in her private Facebook fantasy world, the court heard.
The girl was found dead at their home in Chadwell Heath in east London last August having suffered more than 40 injuries including a bite mark and carpet burns. The court heard that Muddar used fictitious characters called Jimmy Chowdhury and spirit guide Skyman to have sex with Chowdhury and turn her against her own daughter to the extent she admitted hitting her with a wooden spoon and "may have" bitten her.
This is absolutely sickening and outrageous, who in their right mind could do that to a poor child. She was eight. Defenseless. Weak. Now in a place where no child should be. It repulses me that using social media a woman could manipulate who partner into hurting her own child let alone killing her! This is the dark obsession that social media can cause. The addiction is real. We as a generation sit on these three platforms all day long. Constantly checking what is going on in the world and sharing what is going on in our world. Studies have also shown that Facebook and Twitter are more addictive than smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. Social media is like a bar; their both sort of noisy and you have to get peoples attention if you want to stand out. What this does is waste our time, it’s plain and simple. Our time is valuable at our current ages, and to waste it on something that has absolutely no benefit to our lives in the long term will only hurt us rather than help us. This has lead to us as a society to become procrastinators, we look for any possible excuse to take time off from what we actually need to get done and waste our time on something that has no relevance.
Interaction on the internet is not real interaction, it’s a made-up interaction. Anyone can be whoever they want to be because they can make other perceive themselves as someone else. Ever heard of the term catfish? Well that is exactly where social media goes in a downward spiral!
'Catfishing,' a slang term for creating fake profiles on social media to create false identities, has its origins in the 2010 movie 'Catfish,' a pseudo-documentary that chronicled a young man's online friendship with a woman that turned out to be very different from her Facebook profile.

This can cause utter devastation for some people when they have been "catfished". These people may have genuine feelings for the one who they believe they have been talking to, yet that person is sitting at home pretending to be someone their not, it's unfair and extremely cruel. It will always be something that happens as there is no way of actually proving who you are online.

In reality social media is just one big blur, filled with confusion and mayhem! Think for a moment; think about what you remember from actually using social media. Is there any one or two great memorable moments that you can pin down and say were so great? No chance, when you look back at it it’s all just one big blur and a mash of information that you have been fed like a robot. Realize what is important in life and understand that social media is not going to help your personal life in any way, shape or form.