How social networks influence a person. The influence of social networks on a person
Communication on social networks has become common, for some a priority, some even prefer to limit themselves to virtual contacts. Online life can be useful as it expands your social circle, but there are also dangers.
In the modern world, every person has two almost parallel lives - real and virtual, and the second can be much more interesting and richer than the first!
Therefore, every free minute people immediately go to their favorite “habitats” - to social networks, and they are really addictive! The influence of social networks on the behavior of an ordinary person has long been studied by psychologists and sociologists, and certain conclusions have already been drawn that will be interesting for everyone to know.
1. You are constantly looking to check your page.
Are you waiting for a message? Do you want to read the latest news from your friends or see their new photos? do you look at photo albums, read new posts on the “wall” and give “classes” or “likes”? are you really interested in this? Not at all, you just can’t cope with your desire to check your page.
And about a third of those surveyed do this multiple times throughout the day, and most of all they are afraid that something might happen to their page. Such a strong psychological dependence on social networks is comparable, perhaps, to a smoker’s dependence on nicotine. And American psychologists even got their own professional name.
2. “Life” on social networks is the reason
On their Internet pages, people try to talk mainly about the positive moments of their lives - they post photographs of their major purchases, various trips and trips, their interior, workplace, family or pets.
But if suddenly things change and there is nothing to brag about, then the person really becomes psychologically very sick. He cannot talk about his problems because he is afraid of judgment and negative comments, at the same time he becomes sad, depressed, and when he sees photographs of happy and successful friends, then a feeling of envy is added to everything.
All these negative emotions make it much worse Bad mood, which, in the end, can result in a persistent depressive state, which will be very difficult for the user to cope with. And studies by psychologists have shown that excessive passion for virtual life on social networks in the long term can turn a person into an eternally grumbling whiner, a terrible envious person, even if he was previously an optimist and such qualities were completely alien to his nature.
3. Social media can significantly improve your self-esteem
After all, in them you can boast about new achievements and acquired things, interesting pastimes and changes in your personal life, and in response you will definitely receive an approving “like” or “class” from your friends or just passers-by.
While scrolling through your news feed, you might come across a funny video, or a funny but very philosophical poem, or a ridiculous photo with a pithy caption. All this can lift your spirits, fill your life with positivity and increase your self-esteem.
But you should always remember one very interesting property of social networks - on a psychological level they can make good things even better, and bad things even worse, so you should not go to them if you are in a bad mood, you are very upset or even angry with someone .
4. Social media can arouse negative feelings in you such as jealousy.
Even when you have absolutely no reason for this. After all, on the World Wide Web it is very easy to see what your significant other is doing; moreover, his entire virtual life is in the public domain.
Half an hour, or maybe much less, and you already know all his friends and girlfriends and the degree of communication with them, “likes”, virtual gifts, reposts, and then your rich and very wild imagination will “complete” everything itself. Plus a little research work - and you already know everything about your potential rivals.
Are you really sure that you really need this? are you ready to denigrate your life with stupid jealousy empty space? After all, as a rule, virtual life has very little in common with real life. But it also happens that jealousy literally “eats” a person, and he cannot stop, then even the most serious relationship collapse cannot be avoided.
5. You may feel like an outsider.
And your self-esteem will fall through the roof if your virtual friends join groups and you are not invited to them, or constantly show approval to someone and forget about you. But a person feels the most negative emotions when he sends a “friend” request and is ignored or completely refused.
Are you familiar with such situations? it immediately begins to seem to you that you are worse than everyone else, you feel humiliated and unworthy, you even fall into a depressed state. In the real world, this behavior of real friends is called the capacious word “tactlessness,” but in the virtual world, this, unfortunately, is a completely common manner of communication, which is easier to try to ignore.
6. Social media confirms your negative opinions about yourself.
Do you often look at photos of other social media users and immediately begin to compare them with yourself? And the result of such a comparison is certainly not in your favor! Almost two thirds of users are very dissatisfied with their appearance, they consider themselves excessively fat, even if they weigh just over fifty kilograms, flabby, unattractive and in bad shape.
Or maybe you need to stop for a moment and think that during personal communication you can amaze your interlocutor with your breadth of thought, endless charm, deep intelligence, humor and charm, while a photograph on social networks, at best, is just a beautiful picture, which is not always what it appears in perception other users.
Correcting your opinion of yourself is quite simple. Communicate more in real life With real people who will be able to appreciate your personal qualities that no photographs can convey.
7. Social networks provide help during work
Are you surprised? After all, in almost all organizations, access to social networks is blocked so that the employee cannot be constantly distracted by his virtual life.
Psychologists have found that workers who can briefly use their social media accounts are much more productive and productive. This can easily be explained by the fact that such small, unregulated breaks from work help the brain relax and unwind. But you definitely shouldn’t get carried away with such breaks!
8. Social media can ruin friendships.
And all because in virtual world all negative human qualities can manifest themselves more openly when, in reality, on the contrary, people try to restrain them and not let them come out.
Jealousy and envy, anger and irritation, unfulfilled dreams and excessive expectations - all these feelings literally gush inside you when you visit social networks. You want approval and praise, but you are not noticed or outright ignored. You want to chat with friends, write to them about your problems, but they don’t answer or don’t pay attention to you. You feel terribly upset.
But communication on a social network will never replace real real communication. If you have really serious problems, then call your friends, make an appointment with them, and they will definitely listen to you and help you. At such a meeting, all the attention of your friends will be focused on you, and they will not be torn between their work or study and your outpourings on social networks.
Most likely, you yourself have accidentally noticed how deeply social networks have absorbed you. They can truly change your mood, self-esteem, and in some cases, your life. Is it worth it to be so dependent on the virtual factor or is it time to take concrete measures to get rid of this unnecessary dependence? It’s up to you to decide.
Abstract: the first part of the report talks about general principles social networks, the history of development, the influence of social networks on people's lives, contains fresh data on popular networks and highlights problematic areas of this issue.
1. History of development
Not everyone knows that the concept of “social network” appeared back in 1954 and, of course, had nothing to do with the Internet, and they began to study this phenomenon back in the 30s of the last century. The concept was introduced by sociologist James Barnes: “social network” is a social structure consisting of a group of nodes, which are social objects (people or organizations), and connections between them (social relationships) (more details on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Social_network). More to the point in simple language- this is a certain group of familiar people, where the person himself is the center, and his friends are the branches. There are two-way or one-way connections between all network members. For example, this could be a group of classmates in which a certain Jack is the center, and Bill and Catherine are his acquaintances (branches).
Gradually, the scientific concept gained popularity, first in developed capitalist countries, then in Eastern Europe. As society developed, we came to the information age, in which we created a lot of types of communication, which led to a leap in the development of social networks, and now this scientific concept is used everywhere. I will look exclusively at the development of social networks on the Internet.
A landmark event was the invention of the Internet, which became public in 1991 thanks to the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee.
In 1995, Randy Conrad created Classmates.com, the first social network in the modern sense. The concept turned out to be very popular, and from this year the rapid development of social networks on the Internet begins. Today, this network still remains one of the most popular in the world and has more than 50 million users.
In 2004, Facebook appeared, which within a few years became the most popular social network in the world. It uses the same communication mechanism, but on a slightly different plane, which leads to a revolution in this area. The number of active users as of mid-2011 was more than 700 million.
In September 2005, Tim O'Reilly made an ideological revolution by introducing the concept of "Web 2.0" in his article "Tim O'Reilly - What Is Web 2.0", which describes the modern Internet. One of the central parts of the new concept is occupied by social networks.
In 2008, the Groupon project appeared - a service for collective discounts, which, on the one hand, is based precisely on the principle of social networks (call your friends and get a general discount), and on the other hand uses social connections very superficial (only for shopping). The service connects communication and business, which can confidently be called a new level of development of social networks on the Internet, which combines the online and offline worlds.
2. Classification
By region:
- World (hi5)
- Country (Qzone)
- Territorial unit
- Without region (InterNations)
The most interesting classification of social networks is by type, there are many different projects with different types content and for different purposes, each of which occupied its own niche. If we analyze this classification, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that now all the main topics on the network have already been socialized, regardless of the type of content; rapid development continues only in certain niches in which thematic social networks are actively appearing. The last group in the classification of “thematic” networks hides a huge number of communities, each of which is based on thematic content and communication.
The second type of classification shows how accessible the networks are. Now the vast majority of networks are completely open to the outside world, for which they are actively criticized by users, but on the other hand, this is very beneficial for them. Some projects are not aimed at publicity due to their business model, so they were initially created as closed ones. Mixed networks usually develop poorly: their goal is often to gain maximum popularity, like open ones, however, users are not accustomed to barriers and therefore are reluctant to become participants in networks of this type.
The last gradation - by geographic region - is the simplest and most obvious: first, world giants appeared that erased physical boundaries, a little later networks began to develop in individual regions, often copying in whole or in part the world giants, but with a focus on their region. With the development of the Internet, networks gradually began to appear even in individual cities. It is also worth remembering networks that are tied not to a region, but to an organization, for example, social networks of corporations or political parties.
3. People on social networks
The influence of social networks on people’s lives is enormous, many do not even fully realize the scale of this phenomenon, and yet social networks are already the most popular activity on the Internet. Today, of the 100 most visited sites in the world, 20 are classic social networks and another 60 are socialized to one degree or another. More than 80% of companies around the world use social networks in their work. About 78% of people trust information from social networks. Entire revolutions are even organized through them. Social networks have become the very center of the modern Internet.
Information about the person
At the moment, social networks are essentially a huge database with a wide variety of information about hundreds of millions of people around the world, which is also well structured. Recently, networks are increasingly opening up to the outside world, and many personal data of users are already available to everyone. How more people communicates on a variety of social networks, topics more information it can be collected without any difficulty. That is why the controversial statement that “special services collect 70% of information from open sources”, today takes on a completely plausible connotation.
Modern social networks offer users to indicate almost everything about themselves: photo; video; communications (including by type); interests; education; information about work; places where people visit; preferred products; personal thoughts, etc. Most of the information is available without registration, just find the user’s page on popular social networks, the rest can be seen after adding the user as a friend, and all information, including personal correspondence (at a minimum), is available to the administration of this network, and no privacy settings will hide it.
I’ll conduct a small experiment to see if I have information about myself: I’m an average user of social networks, I’m registered in several projects, I periodically communicate in 3, of which I’m active in one, I deliberately don’t show all the information about myself on networks and in different projects I focus on different aspects of your life. By last name and first name you can easily find me on Facebook, Vkontakte, My Circle, Profeo, Habrahabr and some other networks. First we find a profile on the business network My Circle, in which you can find: business photos, professional skills, interests, career information, services I provide, links to other sites. Next, we find a profile on the Profeo business network, in which little information is available without registration, namely, you can find out about your current job, see connections, groups, industry and region. Next we find a VKontakte profile, in which you can see a huge number of my thoughts on the microblog, several extraneous photos and videos, a couple of my unofficial photos, my birthday, a couple of wishes and subscriptions, and by “likes” on the page you can identify friends. Next, we find a Facebook profile, from which we can see several friends and interests. The last thing we find is the IT community Habrahabr, where you can find out my interests, contacts, my friends, companies that interest me, see the materials and comments I have published. All this data can be viewed by any user, even without registering on a specific social network. Using them, you can make a full professional portrait of me and collect a lot of personal information, and if you add me as a friend, the portrait will be about 50-60% complete. And this is taking into account the fact that I deliberately do not show on social networks full information about myself, and in general I don’t have much time to communicate with them.
It is important to understand one feature: on the Internet, as in the real world, people unite in certain social groups(social masks), which do not overlap much with each other. The main global division occurs according to projects, within which the target audience is divided into informal groups based on interests, age and other characteristics. Moreover, there can be several such social masks: during the day a person needs business communication, in the evening communication with friends and family, on weekends communication, for example, related to a hobby, etc. Each person will have their own set of masks, but each of them will have its own characteristics that will influence all behavior. That is why modern man often registered on several social networks, in which he satisfies different needs and makes himself known various information, and recently many people even create several accounts on each social network in order to be able to “put on” different social masks.
In addition, a person gradually changes: he gets old, his interests, life priorities change, etc. This means that yesterday’s schoolchildren who communicated on VKontakte may communicate on LinkedIn tomorrow with completely different life priorities and will want to show completely different information about themselves. This is why it is so important to filter information about yourself on different social networks.
Networking
Today, networks have gathered a huge audience, which attracts more and more specialists from various fields. Some networks only provide the opportunity to communicate, some provide work tools, but one thing is for sure - any popular social network has become a workspace for many millions of people.
People whose activities are based on communication were the first to work in networks. These are sales managers, network marketers, researchers and many others. Entrepreneurs and HR specialists came for them. Now people of all specialties work in networks to one degree or another.
It is quite obvious that this feature is more characteristic of networks for business communication, which, one might say, are created for work, as well as thematic networks where certain groups of people gather. Networks provide the opportunity to look for work (for example, a special section “Jobs” in the popular network among IT specialists from CIS countries “Habrahabr” - http://habrahabr.ru/job/), the opportunity to sell something (for example, a special section “Marketplace Facebook "- http://facebook.com/marketplace/) or simply find business partners (for example, business network"XING" - https://www.xing.com/).
People actively use networks for work and are doing it more and more successfully every year. Many people change jobs through social networks, companies find employees, some groups of specialists have transferred their entire professional activities there. In the near future, we can expect the development of specialized functionality that will allow the creation of virtual workplaces, in particular for professional networks.
Information Security
In the last 3-4 years the theme information security and privacy on social networks attracts a lot of attention. This is understandable: networks are increasingly opening up to the outside world, there have been cases of personal data leaks, user accounts are easily hacked, and network administrations have access to any information. But all this is only the external part, which lies on the surface and about which the press writes, but is far from a complete picture of potential threats to personal data.
The most harmless, at first glance, option for using personal data without the user’s permission can be considered the internal mechanisms of social networks for displaying targeted advertising, selecting potential acquaintances or selecting potential interesting content. These mechanisms have become standard in almost all social networks, and no one hides this fact: they all collect and analyze personal data, of which there is a lot in any network, and then use it for commercial purposes. Moreover, social networks transmit personal data to the outside world, and this fact has already been officially recognized.
More problems for users are caused by leakage of personal data due to the fault of the network, which has happened repeatedly in different projects. One of the largest leaks in terms of size can be considered the leak of personal data of 77 million users of the PlayStation Network in April 2011, and the consequences of this incident are not yet fully clear; there may be a leak of user payment data. There are always a lot of security problems and it is likely that most of these leaks are simply hidden from the public.
Even more serious problems can be caused by hacking individual accounts and gaining access to all the personal information of an individual user if the attackers target a specific person. It is not difficult to do this today even for an ordinary user who simply knows the person and can use social engineering, and in addition there are special hacking services, the cost of which is only $20. The motivation of attackers can be very different, from hacking the accounts of officials of a certain company for the purposes of industrial espionage to personal goals. For example, US marriage lawyers are already recording every fifth divorce due to social networks: spouses gain access to their partner’s profile, find correspondence there with their lover, and as a result, this leads to divorce.
It is also worth remembering about viruses and phishing, which can steal logins and passwords unnoticed by the user and then use them for illegal actions (for example, automatically sending spam on behalf of the user).
However, the biggest threat is that quite a few people have access to all personal information. large group people, and they can view it at any time, even if the person has deleted something from the network. Firstly, these are employees of the social network itself: they have access to databases that contain all the information, as well as special tools for logging into user accounts, such as a special master password on Facebook, which allows you to log into any account . Secondly, law enforcement agencies, such as the CIA in the USA or the FSB in Russia, also have access to information. Not long ago, the famous whistleblower Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, said that Facebook has a special interface that is used by US intelligence, and earlier in Russia popular network VKontakte has already managed to publicly acknowledge the facts of cooperation with law enforcement agencies and the transfer of personal data. All this is quite logical: employees of social networks cannot but have access, this is their job, and employees law enforcement They catch criminals in networks, but this does not eliminate the danger of transferring data to third parties, and often such data can be entire psychological portraits or confidential information.
Lately, users trust social networks less and less and are increasingly beginning to filter information that they are willing to entrust to networks, give false information or are completely removed from the network, but even deletion does not give certainty: often the information is stored on the company’s servers and can be used in the future, in particular, Facebook, VKontakte and other networks do this.
Addiction
Internet addiction has long been a recognized psychological disease, and addiction to social networks is its new form. The reasons for this phenomenon are quite understandable: every person has obvious and hidden needs that he strives to satisfy, this could be the need for communication, self-realization, saving time or something else, and the social network gives a feeling of satisfaction of these needs. And all this seems very accessible, worth writing beautiful quote and 10 people answer you; All you have to do is upload a new photo and 10 people will tell you how beautiful you are; just make a couple of clicks and your friends already have a new interesting acquaintance... However, in essence this is a departure from reality, the replacement of the real with the virtual, which only gives a feeling of satisfaction of needs, but in fact the Internet cannot replace real life, and therefore a person wants more and more , and more, but the more “communication” he receives via the Internet, the more he wants it, and the needs still remain unsatisfied, at least most of them.
A similar addiction gradually develops in many people who once got into a social network. A person gets hooked on the network, and the more time he uses it, the more difficult it is for him to live real life. It’s difficult to feel this, you need to break away from the computer for a few days, and only then a whole bunch of feelings will arise, ranging from a strong desire to go online to serious depression, these are the symptoms of addiction. Addiction leads to many problems: complexes, depression, fears, mood swings and even sexual disorders appear.
This is a psychological disease and, like any disease, requires treatment. It is difficult to treat any psychological problems, let alone addictions. First of all, you need to realize that there is a problem and admit it to yourself. The second step of treatment should be replacement virtual communication to the real, and gradually with the help of friends and relatives it will be possible to recover.
4. Popular social networks
The most popular social network in the world and the most visited site. Since its inception, it has continued to demonstrate amazing growth in both users and profits. The company constantly comes up with and implements new ideas, actively integrates with the outside world, and creates its own Facebook Internet. The rapid growth will continue over the next few years.
Region: mainly USA, Indonesia, UK, Turkey, India, Mexico, Philippines, France, Italy, Germany, more than 5 million users in Russia. Over the past few years, the network has been actively expanding into the markets of many other countries.
Year of foundation: 2004.
Visitors per month: more than 700 million active users.
Increase in attendance: positive.
Problems: Facebook is often criticized for its privacy problems and its extreme openness to the outside world. There are also problems with monetization, and therefore the company is constantly experimenting in this area, although even despite the problems, gross profit grows 2 times annually. Many people don't like the network interface.
Social network for business communication of economically active people. The site is actively used by entire companies around the world. In general, the project has very good prospects: its audience is of “high quality”, and all indicators are steadily growing literally every day.
Region: mainly the USA, the network is also popular in the UK, Spain, and India. It is actively gaining popularity in developed European and Asian countries. In total, more than 200 countries of the world are covered.
Year of foundation: 2003.
Type: network for business communication.
Visitors per month: more than 100 million active users.
Increase in attendance: positive, more than 4 million new users monthly.
Problems: in my opinion, the network does not have enough functionality to work.
A fairly young social network based on microblogging. The idea is quite interesting: the creators took old blogging ideas, artificially limited the length of the message and greatly simplified everything that was possible, resulting in modern world, when life speeds up every day, and there is not enough time, a new popular social network has appeared.
Region: Mainly USA, but also Brazil, UK, Canada and Germany.
Year of foundation: 2006.
Type: blogging network.
Visitors per month: 98 million users, while the network has more than 200 million registrations and is growing rapidly
Increase in attendance: positive.
Problems: For all its success, this network also has serious problems. First of all, competition with other social networks, which are also very popular and provide the same microblogging opportunities as Twitter, in particular we are talking about Facebook, VKontakte and other projects, while in addition to microblogging, competitors offer other social opportunities. Many new users, after trying the service for the first time, remain disappointed and leave it. In addition, the network brings little benefit to its participants: the opportunities are reduced mainly to microblogging, which many use for useless chatter and nothing more. There are problems with spam, which makes up 5-10% of all messages. And to top it off, the network still remains unprofitable, while easily rejecting generous offers from investors to purchase.
The most popular discount service in the world, which gives large discounts on products subject to significant demand for them. This is not a classic social network, but the project uses some principles of social networks, the main emphasis is still on e-commerce.
Region: USA, Canada, UK, France, Brazil, India and many other countries. The region is very important for the project; the company sells products in large cities.
Year of foundation: 2008.
Type: shopping network.
Visitors per month: 8.8 million users, with more than 83 million registered accounts.
Increase in attendance: positive, the project is the youngest of all those analyzed and is now in a stage of explosive growth, which will last at least another 1-2 years.
Problems: The company has only one big problem - how to cope with growth and expand its regional network as quickly as possible. In my opinion, great potential lies in the socialization of the project, adding the possibility of communication within the project and geolocation services. Some experts call Groupon's business model questionable.
In contact with
The most popular social network in the CIS is, in fact, an analogue of Facebook. The rate of growth has slowed recently, especially since Facebook began efforts to localize the site for Russian-speaking audiences and introduced invitation-based registration on VKontakte in early 2011. Over the past year, the network has begun to develop very actively, with new functionality constantly appearing.
Region: mainly Russia, the project is also popular in the CIS countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc. Since 2009, VKontakte bought the domain VK.com, which began expansion into other countries, but so far there has not been much success.
Year of foundation: 2006.
Type: network for personal communication.
Visitors per month: more than 40 million active users, with more than 135 million accounts at the beginning of 2011. The exact numbers are not disclosed.
Increase in attendance: positive.
Problems:: popularity is largely supported by pirated content (music, films, porn), which is why the company has big problems with copyright holders, and the US authorities have included the site in the list of the largest distributors of pirated content in the world. Already, many people go to VKontakte “to listen to music and watch movies,” which is confirmed by the TNS Web Index Report, according to which about 30% of the network’s popularity comes from video. This is, of course, very negative for the social network, people stop using it for its intended purpose, and copyright holders gradually delete their content; this state of affairs over time can lead to a serious decline in popularity. Although the founder of the network, Pavel Durov, denies this, he recently stated: “Addresses to pages with videos account for less than 5% of all VKontakte user activity.” At the same time, keeping silent about what exactly is meant by “hits” - if this is the time spent in the section or the number of pages viewed, then it looks quite plausible, users spend most of their time communicating, and if this is the percentage of unique visitors to the section from the total number of site visitors, then the data is doubtful. Pavel also said nothing about the audio section, which occupies an important place among users. The network is also known for poor quality support, and scandalous stories related to this have repeatedly appeared in the media.
Region: Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries.
Year of foundation: 2006.
Type: network for personal communication.
Visitors per month: more than 20 million users, with more than 68 million accounts.
Increase in attendance: positive.
Problems: Classmates have big problem with aggressive monetization, many services in the project are paid, which causes a negative reaction from users, although new team The project is trying to solve this problem. In addition, the network is very open, and a lot of information is available to the outside world after registration. The last big problem is the poor quality of the interface, which is poorly perceived by users. All these problems are seriously hampering audience growth, despite the fact that it is still positive, in the next few years growth may stop, or even become negative.
Region: Ukraine, now entering Russia with the Plirt.ru project, plans to enter Asian markets.
Year of foundation: 2007.
Type: network for personal communication.
Visitors per month: more than 2 million users.
Increase in attendance: positive.
Problems: there are certain problems with the interface, there is a lot of competition in the dating niche with popular services in the CIS countries.
From the analysis, we can draw quite clear conclusions: social networks have not yet reached the peak of popularity and will grow confidently over the next 3-5 years. All projects now have mainly extensive (quantitative) growth due to attracting untapped users in primary and secondary regions, however, companies are already beginning intensive (qualitative) growth, and very tough competition between projects will begin in the coming years. There are still many free thematic niches on the market in which billion-dollar businesses can be created, which is what is happening now. Today, networks are popular that effectively solve not only the need for communication, but also other global human needs. This year's trends include geolocation and e-commerce on social networks.
5. Problems of social networks.
Many social networks, while rapidly growing in popularity and profitability, also have serious underlying problems. Solving these problems will lead to the enormous growth of social networks, which is what they are now trying to do.
Little utility
The problem with many social networks, especially non-thematic ones, is their lack of usefulness. People spend a huge amount of time there, and in return they only receive electronic communication, most often text, which conveys only 7% of the information, which makes such communication very unproductive, as well as a large number of data, 90% of which is of no value at all. Understanding this problem, many social networks are trying to create new tools that allow users to buy and sell, work, have fun, etc. within them. Solving this problem will become the basis for the development of networks in the next 3-5 years.
Problems with monetization
Social networks today are not a very profitable business. They require significant resources to create and maintain, and there are few direct monetization tools, and most of them are based on traffic, which does not allow you to overcome the break-even point in the first few years of the project's existence. In this regard, experiments in the field of monetization are constantly being conducted. The solution to this problem will also greatly influence the development of social networks in the coming years: tools will be introduced ecommerce, new paid services will appear, a lot of attention will be paid to mediation between users, but I will talk about monetization in part 4 of the report.
Audience Crossing
Social networks have already covered the entire Internet. Today there is a huge variety of projects in many countries. Hundreds of millions of people from all over the world are registered in them. Moreover, each project is unique and solves slightly different needs: in some networks people communicate about their personal lives, in others about work, in others they consume content. This has led to significant audience overlap, with the same person registering on multiple social networks or even having multiple registrations on each project to meet different needs. First of all, this is due to the fact that many networks have not yet developed tools to effectively satisfy different needs, which often interfere with each other, and on the other hand, companies do not want to integrate with each other for fear of competition. That is why people are divided into different social groups in different networks, and an individual person can be present in several groups at once. In the future, the winners will be those projects that can learn to combine the satisfaction of different needs, and thereby create for themselves a huge competitive advantage or at least begin integration with projects from an indirect competitive group.
Distorted user information
In recent years, deliberate distortion of data about themselves by users has become increasingly common. Many people completely or partially change their first and last names, indicate false information in their profiles, and do not disclose a lot of information at all. The number of such people has not been accurately estimated, but already their number can reach 10-15% of the total number of active users, and this figure is constantly growing. In general, the problem is related to data privacy: it is beneficial for social networks to open up as much data about users as possible, which they do successfully, but people, on the contrary, want to hide some of the information. The trend will continue until social networks begin to provide tools to maintain guaranteed anonymity from everyone, including the networks themselves.
Another big problem in social networks is spam. This is a paradise for spammers who can send personalized unwanted advertisements. Social networks are trying to actively combat this, introducing new mechanisms for identifying spam and blocking it, but spammers also do not stop developing. This problem causes serious losses to networks and inconveniences users.
Accounts of the dead
People are born, live and die. This is a natural process and is not under our control. However, this process creates a problem for social networks: how to determine that a person has died and what to do with their account?
These are all common problems found in almost all social networks. At the same time, we should not forget that each region will also have its own local problems, of which there are also quite a few.
6. Features of development in North America, Europe and Asia.
The whole world is not developed evenly and social networks, accordingly, too. The most developed region can be called North America, primarily the United States, where the penetration of social networks per capita is very high. It is in this country that many popular social networks are created and developed, and its residents become the core of users of popular projects.
North America and Western Europe
These two geographical regions are the most developed in the field of economics and IT, they have a large number of social networks of all popular types. The regions can be called innovative; new ideas are actively generated here and strong startups are created, which in a few years turn into large corporations.
Now this market is already crowded with general social networks that solve a person’s need for communication. Much attention is paid to thematic projects, which are based on thematic communication, narrowly focused content and unique services, although there are still free niches.
Existing projects are seeking to expand into other regions (for example, Facebook recently announced its plans to enter the Chinese market) and at the same time intensively improve from a qualitative point of view. Much attention is paid to monetization of projects.
A very closed market with a lot of features, which is also characterized by large volumes, which makes it attractive to many companies. Many world-famous projects have tried and are trying to enter the Asian markets, but this is extremely difficult.
Asian countries predominantly have their own social networks, which largely clone their popular counterparts from the United States, but there is also a large share of innovation. The only exception, perhaps, is India, where social networks from North America and Western Europe.
The market is quite full and there are fewer and fewer free niches every year.
Eastern Europe
An actively developing market with already impressive volumes. It lags behind more developed regions by 3-5 years. Social networks are mainly copied from popular analogues in the developed countries of North America and Western Europe; in the last few years, a lot has been copied from Asia, which has saturated the market with clones; there is very little innovation. The most developed in the region is Russia, where almost all popular social networks in the region are concentrated. The market's lagging has also energized investors who are happy to invest in clones.
Local projects are mainly developing within the local market; several large companies have begun to think about expansion into other regions.
Conclusions: of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg; entire encyclopedias can already be written about social networks. Networks have already penetrated very deeply into our lives and continue to gain popularity; their influence on people is still underestimated. Currently, mainly general networks are developed, but in the near future new projects will be developed, both in topic and functionality. As in any fast-growing segment, there are a number of tangible problems, but all of them are completely solvable. Soon, social networks on the Internet will change the world quite a lot; they have already become an influential instrument of power.
The first part of the report: “All about social networks. Impact on a person";
The second part of the report: “All about social networks. Development prospects " ;
third part of the report: “All about social networks. Technologies " ;
The fourth part of the report: “All about social networks. Monetization »
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The way our world has changed is truly impressive. Many changes are truly global. Not only technologies are becoming different, but there is no doubt - today life has become much easier. Just think about the significant role the Internet plays in getting the information you need. There is no longer any point in sitting for hours in libraries or going shopping in search of the right book or film. Now everything you need can be obtained right from the comfort of your home. Is it good? Of course, life has become much simpler. Is this useful? Undoubtedly, because we can now avoid many “unnecessary” procedures. Everything would be fine, but there are pitfalls everywhere. Progress has significantly changed our lives, but not entirely for the better.
Do you remember how, as a child, friends stood under the windows, shouting our name loudly - that’s how they called us to go for a walk; remember how we had to go to a friend’s house to convey some information? Agree, today people communicate with each other directly much less than before. Often all communication comes down to everyone sitting at home and sending messages to their friends through social networks. who consider such communication more productive and interesting than personal communication. Are the harms of social media real? Yes, it really exists.
Some will say that social networks are extremely useful because they give people the opportunity to communicate even over long distances. It is almost impossible to argue with this fact. There are also many supporters in the world that the Internet gives even a person who is unsure of his abilities the opportunity to prove himself. There is some truth here too.
What is the harm of social networks? Look around: what is happening to our children? They no longer walk outside in the evenings, don’t play football in the yard, don’t gather with friends. All they need is a computer. When asked to go for a walk with friends, they respond that they already communicate well with them. Every day the world becomes less and less interesting for them.
What good will happen to a person who sits at a computer all day? His health will become worse, he will become overweight, and it will become much more difficult for him to communicate in real life.
Yes, you can be an Internet star, you can make friends all over the world, learn to surprise people with unusual (although not independently invented) messages, but sooner or later you will have to understand that life must be arranged in this world. A person who is withdrawn and not used to normal communication can become immersed in social networks. What's wrong with that? The harm of social networks is that they only provide illusions. A person who is mired in them will think that everything is fine with him and will stop making attempts in order to somehow realize himself in life.
Social networks, the harm of which we consider, literally teach us how to live. From them we understand what is good and what is bad. You say that television is zombie-like? Yes, those who watch TV, as a rule, are deprived of their opinions, but Internet lovers also have problems. The harm of social networks lies in the fact that they unobtrusively introduce new standards, dictate whose rules it is unclear, and tell us what to do. The information that spreads in them at lightning speed is not useful, cultural, or in demand. In most cases, it is garbage that is passed off as something necessary and needed.
The harm of social networks is obvious. Know that they are delaying. It's not always easy to realize that time is being wasted. Make any decisions only thoughtfully. remember, that real communication nothing can ever replace it. Life is constant movement and development. For the most part, all this is only possible in the real world. Illusions destroy.
I have already touched upon the question of the dangers of social networks in other articles, but now I decided to consider this topic in a separate article. Here I will talk about how passion for social networks like Contact, Facebook, Odnoklassniki, Twitter can negatively affect a person’s mental health. I'll give you some tips on how to use social media for good and not bad. I also compiled a rating of social networks, which you can find at the end of the article.
Social networks have outlined trends in the development of the Internet towards integration, combining capabilities within single, multi-user web platforms. These platforms provided the user with the opportunity to communicate with friends, read news, watch movies, listen to music, share this with other participants, take part in discussions, unite by interests, create communities, and all these opportunities are concentrated on one site!
Undoubtedly, social networks are a great technological achievement that promises many opportunities. But along with these opportunities come troubles... It cannot be said that social networks are all harm, just as the same cannot be said, for example, about computer games. With the right, disciplined approach to this miracle of Internet technology, you can get some benefits and make your life easier. But there is always a risk that working with social networks will have harmful consequences on our psyche.
What consequences could this have? What is dangers of social networks? This will be discussed below.
Social media addiction
Social networks have a great addictive potential, that is, a significant risk of addiction. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that social media activity irritates the pleasure centers in our brain. We experience pleasant emotions, every time we read a friendly comment under our photo, we get a “like” when someone leaves positive feedback etc.
Wish re-receipt These emotions carry us back to the expanses of social networks, forcing us to spend more and more time there.
The second reason lies in the peculiarities of assimilation of information when working in multi-user web platforms. A person who is in contact, for example, receives a lot of different information in small portions in a short period of time: he read a short comment, responded, immediately opened the news, looked at an interesting post in the community about science, began to read, turned on the audio recording at the same time, and didn’t read enough , since my attention was diverted by a message from a friend, I replied and went to this friend’s page to see what was new there.
The brain gets used to this mode of operation as quickly as the hands and mouth get used to the “clicking” of seeds. It’s not just about the pleasure itself and the peculiarities of assimilation of information, but about the convenience, speed and accessibility of social networks!
To enjoy another person’s opinion about your photo, you don’t have to suffer much: log in (even from your phone) and with one click see how many people “liked” your photo on the beach! To occupy your attention with something that is not stressful and captivating, you don’t need to look for an interesting article in the search engine: you opened a contact and started reading the news and watching your friends’ updates. Everything is fast and convenient.
Speed and accessibility, in my opinion, are important prerequisites for the formation of any addiction. A person instinctively looks for the easiest ways to achieve pleasure, even if these ways are ineffective and lead to harmful consequences. Take, for example, the habit of smoking. Fast and affordable.
Social Media Addiction Research
We often talk about addiction to social networks, not realizing how close to the truth we are. Psychologists from the University at Albany (USA) published in the journal Addiction an article that claims that you can be addicted to Facebook in the same way as you can be addicted to any chemical substances.
About 300 students aged 18 years and older participated in the study. The vast majority (90%) used a social network, spending about a third of all time spent on the Internet on it. All of them had to answer questions that were a test for alcohol dependence, only adapted to the social network - for example, one of the questions could sound like “How good does visiting Facebook make you feel?”
As a result, psychologists came to the conclusion that 10% of social network users experience psychological symptoms similar to those that occur with alcohol addiction. Of course, they often went to the Facebook page - but, in addition, if for some reason they could not do this, their irritation grew, and it grew more and more as longer person I was left without my favorite social network. “Facebook addicts” developed emotional instability, impulsive behavior, and had less control over their own emotional impulses. By the way, those who were addicted to the social network often also had problems with alcohol. That is, as the authors of the study believe, addiction to Facebook facilitates the development of other types of addictions.
Any addiction arises from an exorbitant feeling of satisfaction, a reward, which our brain strives to experience again and again. On the social network, such “rewards” are presented in what is called an assortment, from “likes” to notifications about content updates. And at the same time, we don’t know when and how such an update will happen, who will like it and when, and such uncertainty in waiting for and receiving a reward strongly forms the habit of repeating certain actions, which is also very difficult to get rid of later . In the case of social networks, mobile applications make their contribution, thanks to which you can never bother with page updates and new news.
However, whether “Facebook addiction” is recognized as having a right to exist will become clear after further research; it is possible that this phenomenon will become part of some more general, globally media addiction, when a person can no longer imagine his existence without news, pictures, TV, social networks and the like.
Decreased attention span
Above, I wrote about how information can be absorbed by a user on social networks: quickly, spontaneously and in small portions. As I already said, the brain gets used to working with information in this way and gradually loses the ability to maintain attention on something for a long time. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder develops. This is a side effect generated by the philosophy of information integration: when working with a single web interface begins to combine many functions such as communication, listening to music, discussing meetings, etc., the user is tempted to do everything at once and perform several processes in parallel.
This has a bad effect on our thinking abilities. It becomes difficult to maintain attention for a long time, for example, while reading a book. Our mind, following an acquired habit, begins to jump from one subject to another. Therefore, difficulties arise in order to consistently think and think about one problem: attention constantly “floats away”.
This problem is especially acute in the context of the younger generation. Children's thinking is much more “plastic” than adults and therefore can more easily adopt harmful standards of thinking that form, among other things, social networks.
Information dependence
Social networks can turn into a kind of chewing gum for the brain. We get used to constantly receiving some kind of information and if this does not happen, we begin to experience information withdrawal. It is expressed in the fact that it becomes difficult for us to relax in those situations when little data enters the brain, for example, when we are traveling on the subway or are in the country. After all, our brain is always worried about not stopping chewing this gum and requires new pieces of information, as it is used to receiving it every day from social networks.
Fatigue, stress
Working in the mode of an incessant flow of information and successive emotional impressions, the brain becomes very tired and the body experiences stress. In addition, while working on social platforms you look at the monitor, and an overabundance of such activity itself leads to fatigue, no matter what you read.
Alienation, decreased intelligence
When you spend a lot of time on social networks, your brain is busy with meaningless and aimless activity that cannot be called full-fledged. intellectual work. You just keep him busy with something to keep him busy all the time, without thinking about the quality of the incoming information. Instead, you could think about something, come to a solution to life's problems, make plans for the future, come up with some useful idea, read a good book, etc. But all this is impossible while your mind is puzzled by chewing the Internet gum, turning you into a thoughtless and alienated zombie.
Due to the fact that information comes in quickly and continuously, you don’t have time to digest it or think it over. Emotions do not develop in response to incoming impressions, since this requires time and peace, which are not available in conditions of frantic assimilation of information. It’s as if you are throwing dumplings, salad, cucumbers, borscht, sweets into your mouth and without chewing... Combining sweet and salty, cold and hot in one culinary combination.
You can’t even say what you liked most, since you were in a hurry to swallow everything as quickly as possible and there was no time to form an assessment, a certain emotional response. Besides, indigestion awaits you ahead...
Compassion, empathy, interest and passion disappear before they have time to really take shape in your psyche, as one information abruptly replaces another.
I should note that the above-mentioned consequences of harm can appear not only due to dependence on social networks. These symptoms can be the result of overindulgence computer games both the Internet in general and the consequence of many manifestations of modern life: intense work, fast pace of life, disorderly consumption of information, boredom...
The harm of social networks has been scientifically proven
Scientific experiment led by Edinburgh University scientist Ayad Rahwan, clearly proved the influence of social networks on the logic of thinking and decision making. The experience made it possible to prove a decrease in the analytical abilities and volumes of memorized data among the active audience of social networks.
The experiment consisted of two consecutive parts. In the first of them, participants were asked to decide simple task to logic: the cost of a bat with a ball is 1.10 pounds, it is known that the bat is a pound more expensive than the ball. You need to find out how much the ball costs. Despite the easy complexity, after a short deliberation, few were able to voice the correct answer - the majority chose the option of 0.10 pounds, the correct one was 0.05.
After the correct answer was announced to the subjects, the second stage of the experiment began: the same task was posed to a group of people, some of whom already knew the solution. When asked for answers, many people's opinions quickly changed when they heard others' answers.
The experiment carried out, according to Ayad Rahwan, clearly demonstrates the rapid loss analytical thinking and a “superficial” perception of the situation. The opinions of many scientists regarding the stereotypical nature of human thinking agree on the existence of certain “models” of behavior caused by some external stimuli.
Such “models” imply almost the same order of actions in a familiar situation. Social networks contribute to the formation of false patterns of behavior, and also cultivate trust in unverified authorities, whose opinion may be decisive, but not always correct, when making any decision.
The doctor also emphasized that most modern social networks create a “superficial” perception and difficulties in assimilating a large amount of information. According to statistics, only a small percentage of visitors are able to read to the end a voluminous material that does not contain illustrations, and an even smaller number are able to deeply analyze what they read. In addition, the amount of stored data is rapidly decreasing due to almost constant access to the Internet.
Instagram has been named the worst social network for mental health
The British Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) has named Instagram as the most harmful social network affecting the mental health of young people. The RSPH has published a new report outlining the positive and negative effects of social media on the health of young people.
According to the survey, YouTube tops the table as the most positive media platform. Second place went to Twitter, and the list was completed by Facebook, Snapchat, and last place Instagram.
In total, about 1,500 people aged 14 to 24 took part in the survey. Respondents rated which of five popular social media platforms had the most impact Negative influence on the psyche of users. Survey participants were asked to rate social networks in a number of categories and answer questions about the impact of the platforms on health and well-being.
In April, American researchers said that using Facebook makes you feel worse and increases weight. Scientists have concluded that Facebook negatively affects a person’s mental and physical well-being.
Is it possible to use social networks without harm?
Despite the terrible things that I described above, I am sure that social networks are not an absolute evil, you just need to use them wisely and in moderation in everything, as in many other things. I don’t see anything wrong with the opportunity to meet people with similar interests, find old acquaintances and rehabilitate past connections, have a convenient and accessible interface to chat with your friends, listen to music (and find it) and watch movies. Social networks have a number of useful functions that make life and work on the Internet much easier.
This is a major technological and cultural breakthrough in the development of the Internet. But, as with many breakthrough technologies, when working with social platforms, you need to be careful so that they do not turn into harm. I will give some advice on the “hygiene” of spending time on social media. networks.
There is no need to log in and check VKontakte updates every hour, during every free minute at work or at home. Limit your visits to social media pages to, say, twice a day. If you are used to visiting social networks at work in your free minutes, then conduct this experiment. Instead of frantically opening your browser and logging into Odnoklassniki/Contact as soon as you are free from work, go out for a walk or just sit quietly for 10 minutes on a chair with the monitor turned off. Give your brain a break from information! At the end of the day you will feel much less tired, I assure you!
If you have a lot of free time at work, then it is better to spend it on something more valuable and necessary than social networks. Read informative articles, learn new things, because modern internet provides so many wonderful opportunities to obtain any information! The Internet is not only social networks!
If you follow this advice and spend less time in contact, for example, no more than half an hour a day, then you simply won’t have time left for any stupid activity, like the one that consists of commenting on every photo, liking every video, being keep up to date with all your friends' updates. Use social networks only for their intended purpose, that is, as an interface that allows you to communicate, exchange opinions, and learn about events. But do not abuse these opportunities, avoid unnecessary and meaningless “chatter”.
When you sit on social networks, you are killing your time, which could be spent on something more valuable that would benefit you in the future! The brain, busy chewing Internet gum, is not able to generate any ideas, any thoughts, it is exclusively engaged in stupid activity, working idle. A person who spends all his time on the Internet or TV is the embodiment of a social zombie from dystopian novels about the future. He doesn't think about anything, has no imagination, his mind is constantly occupied with likes, clicks and digesting media slop.
Social networks = control over the Internet?
Maybe social networks are a means of global control over the Internet. After all, many users spend the bulk of their time online on social platforms. For them, the Internet is limited to the space of these platforms. Social networks themselves only stimulate this trend, striving for greater integration, capturing more and more new functions (watching movies, music, games) for which we go online.
One global site is much easier to control than many local, disparate domains. Moreover, if such a site has moderation and a requirement for de-anonymization (registration strictly under one’s own full name). It is likely that the idea controlled internet It is already developing in reality through the mass passion for social media.
Of course, this does not mean that social networks were invented precisely for this purpose. But the fact remains that despite the fact that social platforms want to claim full coverage of the opportunities that people want to get from the Internet, the information there is very limited, both in quantitative terms and in the ability to obtain this information using the capabilities of the engine. In short, most social networks are not aimed at ensuring that a person studies something and receives the information he needs in full.
These sites cannot become a full-fledged replacement for the entire Internet, no matter how much they strive for this. This is the main conclusion from the thoughts I outlined above. I don’t want to create any kind of paranoia in you based on the idea of total control and surveillance of you via the Internet. I myself regard all sorts of paranoid theories and people who are obsessed with them with slight irony. Just don't overuse social networks and remember that there are plenty of other useful sites, for example, Wikipedia, sites with popular science information, sites about self-development, specialized blogs... The Internet is not limited to social media.
My personal social network rating
To brighten up the gloomy tone that this article began to take on towards the end, let me tell you about my favorite social networks; it turns out that some sites can be quite useful.
Useful social networks
last.fm is my favorite social network. (And this is not an advertisement) It is designed to search for music and it is implemented there very conveniently, at least I really like it. I really love music, I listen to different styles from electronic styles to jazz and rock. This site provides an excellent opportunity to find performers to your liking, based on your own musical preferences. The site learns about your tastes by connecting to home media player (winamp, foobar) or ipod and receiving information about played songs from there.
To search for new artists, you can use the system’s recommendations, you can search for similar musicians to those you like, you can search by style or find out what your friends are listening to. The system informs the user about events in his city that may be of interest to him. For example, if there is a performer in your listening library, Orbital, then the system in the “events” tab will notify you about the arrival of these musicians in your city. A very useful feature.
In short, there are many possibilities. But, like any social network, you can get stuck on last.fm: wander aimlessly through friends’ pages, leave stupid comments, move from link to link and waste time. Here, too, you need to know when to stop and use the site for its intended purpose. Then it can become very useful.
imdb.com With this site, choosing a movie to watch in the evening has ceased to be a long and labor-intensive task for me. I no longer need to read cumbersome reviews from homegrown film critics to find a movie that suits my tastes. There are many ways to search for films on this site: find your favorite film and the system displays a list of films that were liked by people who love any of your films. In fact, this is a very good algorithm. This way I discovered a lot of great films.
You can search by director, actor, soundtrack author. You can rate the films you watch yourself, and the system itself will give you recommendations. The imdb rating has long become an authoritative standard for evaluating films, which guides millions of movie lovers around the world when choosing films.
StumbleUpon - Recently discovered this great social network. The idea is this: when registering, you indicate your interests, for example, self-development, physics, pets, and press the magic “Stumble” button. The site's program searches for you pages on the Internet that match your interests, for example, “The 10 most fascinating physics experiments” if you marked “physics” in your interests. The page is shown directly in the interface window, that is, you don’t have to leave your profile page, you look at other sites as if through the StumbleUpon window.
At the same time, you have access to all the functions that are on the site that this social network shows you. You can leave comments, make purchases, etc.
The system shows you only those pages that other users liked. Great alternative website ranking in search engines. This system turns out to be indispensable in a situation when you want to spend time on the Internet, but don’t know where to start. StumbeUpon itself will suggest you pages that match your interests.
livelib.ru social network of books. I came across this site when I was trying to find something similar to last.fm, only not for music, but for books. I wanted to read, but didn’t know which book to choose. I was looking for a web service that would make my search easier. I haven’t spent much time on it, since I discovered it only recently, but, at first glance, the site is good and the interface is user-friendly. You can find literature for every taste, read reader ratings, author biographies, etc.
Less useful social networks
vk.com is a good site in terms of engine, capabilities and technology (although I’m not a big expert on web technologies, in my opinion, they are very, very advanced in the case of VK). True, if used inappropriately, side effects are possible, such as addiction and a pointless waste of time and everything that I wrote about above. But, nevertheless, the site is convenient in many respects.
You can listen to almost any piece of music, watch movies, and all this is free. There is an opportunity to find old acquaintances from school, work, pioneer camp, etc. For me, contact is convenient because you can easily view pictures on any topic: travel, painting, old photos, etc. All this is presented in the appropriate groups and is very easy to find.
VKontakte also provides user-friendly interface to communicate with other users.
I like facebook.com much less than in contact. You can't watch movies, just like you can't listen to music. The engine is not as intuitive as VK's. VKontakte was originally a clone of FB, but now, in my opinion, contact has surpassed facebook. I even feel some kind of pleasant pride in Russian developers and programmers.
Useless platforms
twitter.com - this site is just a neutered version of Facebook, stripped down to the ability to write short statuses, broadcasting them to the general thread and receiving answers to them. However, Twitter has become very popular. Of course, on this site you can read good quotes, learn about latest news, but overall, I don’t see much use in this social network. Although I have an account there (link at the top right of the page) =).
There are many more social networks, both in RuNet and in the international segment, and, exclusively, on the English-language Internet. But I can’t tell you anything more about any platforms, since I only worked with the above examples.
Social networks can bring many benefits: help you find an old friend, find out about a new book or music album, organize a meeting and event. But abuse of social networks (the Internet, work, computer games) can lead to addiction, loss of attention, waste of time, alienation and dullness. Social networks are not a great evil, as many people believe. This is both good and bad. It is in your power to take only the good from them and weed out the bad.
Human life is quite extensive, so this list represents only the most stunning research findings related to social media.
Most likely, if you are reading this article, you are connected in one way or another with social networks. The following studies and their results will help reveal that danger. For psychological health, that social networks bring.
Social media addiction
Research shows that 63% of Americans are on social media. daily, and 40% come by several times a day(today we can say with confidence that our compatriots are not far behind American Internet users in this matter). People use such sites for many purposes, but the main reason is distract attention from everyday life or escape boredom.
People love to leave comments and post any information. And it is so addictive that a person simply cannot stop. Today there is even a measurement scale addiction to social networks.
Social media influence
Social networks contribute idealization something that's not really worth it special attention: Thus, virtual life distorts the concept of real values. This forces users to constantly compare themselves with other people and think less about their own lives. Individuality is eradicated from a person, thereby causing negative the influence of social networks on human life.
If things are going well for people you know in your news feed, but you're having a hard day, then it will negative influence your mood.
Relatively recently, British researchers surveyed a group of social network users, and it turned out that 53% of people believe that social media influence on their behavior, and 51% of users admitted that they my mood was getting worse due to comparisons with the lives of other users.
The problem of social networks
Here is another psychological problem associated with social networks. Of the above-mentioned study group, two thirds admitted that experience stress when you are unable, for one reason or another, to access your account on a social network.
Internet threats
Online threats or cyberbullying especially relevant for teenagers.
For your information! Cyberbullying is illegal actions that are carried out via the Internet and are aimed at psychological pressure on a teenager. Methods can be very different: psychological violence, online threats, intimidation, blackmail, intimidation and others.
There is even an entire organization called Enough is Enough that strives to make the Internet safe for everyone. According to a survey by this organization, 95% of teenagers who use social media have witnessed cyberbullying, and 33% were victims themselves this phenomenon.
Disadvantage of social networks
Research examining the relationship between teens, social media, and drug use found that 70% of teens ages 12 to 17 who use social media daily are five times more likely to smoke tobacco three times more often drink alcohol and twice as often smoke marijuana.
In addition, 40% of teenagers admitted that they were exposed to influence of photographs and various images on social media.
Social media brings unhappiness
A study conducted at the University of Michigan collected data on Facebook users and the influence of this social network on their moods.
The results showed that those users who regularly accessed social networks were more unhappy and generally dissatisfied with life compared to those users who visited the same Internet site much less often.
Social media creates fear
Social networks develop a feeling of fear before missing any event, and the user is constantly under the pressure of this fear. Numerous studies show that people constantly concerned how his status, photos and other details posted on his web page will look in the eyes of other social media users.
Social media is a distraction
How many tabs do you have open right now? Are you sure you're focused on one thing? The fact is that you are unlikely to be focused enough if a social network page is open on the monitor.
Research has shown that our the brain has no way fully focus on two tasks at once. Instead of solving certain problems, human brain constantly switches from one task to another. This makes it difficult information processing and reduces brain performance.