Social media and the internet are new advents in human history. New technologies have always given us new strengths as well as unforeseen problems. The internet and all of its applications are no different. For the first time in our history, we have people addicted to electronic devices, much like a drug. While at the same time, others have taken social media and the internet to create valuable careers and lifestyles.

Now while some might have addition or other problems due to overuse of social media. Some people found different ways to use social media to their advantage.

The internet is can easily be used to manipulate information. Social media is easy to lie on, and to a lot of people. People are also able to inflate their own ego on social media. Just like narcissists lie on social media for attention and clout, so has big cooperation and government intel agencies have taken note of this and used this to their advantage more so. This can be seen with the massive amounts of disinformation on there. I see the lies, but others don’t, and problems occur when the internet and social media take too much control of their lives.

Truth be told, the internet was a weapon designed to be used against you, in the form of mind control, much like the television was. If we aren’t careful, we can fall prey to mind control.
Useless Internet Time
Don’t let something as powerful and useful social media turn into a useless addiction., much like with Television in the past. Not everyone who uses social media has this problem but most people who are familiar with social media tend to waste more time on their phones than they should. This in turn makes it difficult to have a healthy social life and can hinder the experience of joyful activities with others in real life, outside of the internet.

The best thing to do is to use the internet to make it better for us, either by having it help keep us organized, helping us figure out how to do something, or simply the ability to learn something new. All of these tasks can all be done with the aid of a cellphone/computer, that can fit in our pockets. Our ancestors would be jealous, but it should be clear to anyone as to the negative impacts the internet has on our daily lives as well.

The internet and media have the ability to also effects the ways our brain functions and is structured. Many people have fell victim to these negative mental conditions without even knowing it. People in many fields, such as psychology, marketing, and media, have studied this phenomenon to use them to their own advantage.

The first noticeable difference in how the internet impacted us is in how it shortens our attention spans. People who spend a lot of time surfing social media, the web, or watching shorten videos, usually have shorten attention spans. This is because they spend most of their time having their minds process a lot of different things rapidly while online. This eventually leads to them being forgetful, and sometimes not being able to pay attention that well.

Too much unhealthy internet time can also impact the way our brain processes memories. With people spending too much time-consuming vast amounts of information online, our brain begins to shift the way it works. People who are accustomed to using computer technologies are better in the way we retrieve information, the way we store information has also changed as well. Some can also go as far as to say the value knowledge changes. But their real-life memories become weaker as a result.

The most notable change we see in ourselves as human collectively thanks to the internet is in our social cognition. This is how well we socially interact with one another. When the internet first became accessible to the public, it was a cheap escape from the real world. As the internet developed so did its ability for it to resemble more real-world social processes, such as in how we communicate. The internet does help us keep in touch with more people than we would normally be able to, this is great for people who produce content or run businesses. Unfortunately, as people become more reliant on the internet and social media for human contact and communications, our real-world social skills and number of events involving social interaction have decreased as well. This has led to a detrimental problem such as false self-concepts, such as low self-esteem or narcissism. Television has been able to do the same thing to some extent, but not as badly as the internet.

There is evidence which indicates that use of social media and the internet can produce acute and sustained altercation in different areas of our cognitive abilities. This effect varies from person to person. The amount of time we spend and the type of activities we do while using the internet also dictate how and to what effect.

Useless scrolling for someone in youth may have a different impact than an elderly person using the internet to learn new material or even set reminder/ organizational systems. There are many different areas one can research to see how the internet impacts human thinking and emotions, both in regard to positive experience and the negative impacts it has on us as well.

If you fall into the category of people who find themselves uselessly wasting their time on the internet it’s understandable. It was designed that way to get you hooked, just like a drug. However just like the internet can be a crutch, it can also be a useful aid as. It all depends on the way in which we use it, as well as pointing out ways internet time might be harmful first. Just like there are different ways any vice can be dangerous, the internet is the same way in that different things cause people to abuse the internet.