Social Media Hurting Society

1. Joey Hernández
Professor Blanco
FYS
November 20, 2015
Social Media Hurting Society
Social media has been a “boom” in society. Although it has existed for a really short
period of time, it has changed many things we used to do. It has also changed the way we behave
and interact with people. Social media is one of the most influential instruments we have now a
days, but most of the time its information is erroneous. People get persuaded by social media
almost all the time because they don’t have that sense of skepticism. They just assume it is all
true without doing actual research and looking for more information related to the topic.
Although social media has helped us somehow, it has hurt society greatly.
Children exposed to social media are greatly influenced by the things they see and hear.
Pornography is one of the biggest concerns that most parents have when kids are exposed to
social media. Pornography can be basically everywhere. It can be so easily accessed that 68% of
young men and 18% of young women watches porn at least once a week. On average, 17% of
performers use condoms in heterosexual porn films. 66% of porn performers have herpes, and
7% of porn performers have HIV. A survey done by porn actresses demonstrated 79% of porn
stars have used marijuana, 50% have used ecstasy, 44% have used cocaine, and 39% have used
hallucinogens. When hundreds of scenes were analyzed from the 50 top selling adult films, 88%
of scenes contained acts of physical aggression, and 49% of scenes contained verbal aggression
(Gilkerson). This shows how pornography obviously hides all this information for the benefit of

2. their company. This is what children are exposed to and since they do not see anything wrong
with it, they look forward to not just watch it, but to imitate what they have seen in those videos
causing them to increase the possibility of getting any kind of sexual transmission disease.
Cyberbullying is another important topic that many adolescents deal with in social media.
When people think about bullying, the first thing it comes to mind is physical and verbal
violence. Now with technology, children have the chance to threaten, intimidate or embarrass
other children through almost every social media ("Cyberbullying."). 87% of teens have
witnessed cyber bullying, 72% of victims were cyber bullied because of their appearance, 26%
because of their religion or race, 22% due to their sexuality, and almost 50% of people deleted
their social media accounts due to this problem ("Impact of Cyber Bullying on Youths").
Sometimes cyberbully may cause depression, isolation from society, anxiety, and sometimes it
can even lead to suicidal thoughts or actual suicide (Bauman).
Violence in social media has been very influential on teens these days. It may encourage
observers to commit crime, be more aggressive and violent, antisocial, and even have criminal
behaviors. The constant exposure of violence causes the observer to imitate such conduct
("Violence and the Media."). A study showed that by the time a child finishes elementary school,
he or she will have seen approximately 8000 murders and more than 100,000 other acts of
violence (Donnerstein). This shows how people are constantly bombarded with violence
throughout social media and media in general.
It is very hard to find credibility navigating through social media. People usually look
things up on the internet and do not question if the information is right or if it is completely false.
Not everything we read is true. Information on websites may sound very authoritative, but
sometimes they are very wrong although they might sound right. Another thing that people think

3. is that everything we post on social media, including text or e-mail, is private. When we text or
send an e-mail to a person we might think that the conversation is between you and the other
person, but the other person may forward or copy the conversation to make it public. This is why
it is important to remain as professional as possible while posting things in social media because
you never know who is going to see what you posted. Also, what we post online can stay there
forever. It is possible to delete a post, but it always exists somewhere. People can also take
screenshots before the post being deleted and have a copy and evidence of what was posted
("Talking to Children About Social Media.").
In conclusion, social media has hurt society more than it has helped us. Many of the
problems that we are facing today are because of social media. Children exposed to pornography
are very likely to imitate that conduct and think that that is the correct way of having sexual
relations when the truth is that sex is mostly about love towards a person and not just a short time
of pleasure involving physical and verbal violence. Violence is basically everywhere in social
media. Movies, fighting videos, and even sports sometimes can illustrate violence to the people
watching. Cyberbullying is also a problem many teens are facing on a daily bases causing them
to feel uncomfortable with themselves and sometimes affecting them in a psychological, social,
and physical way. Also, credibility has been an issue because there has been so much erroneous
information on social media that it is sometimes difficult to believe certain information without
being a little skeptical. This shows that social media has obviously been and will continue to be a
problem in society.

4. Works cited:
Bauman, Sheri. "Cyberbullying." Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publications, 2012. Credo Reference. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
"Cyberbullying." Harvard Medical School Commentaries on Health. HarvardHealthPublications.
Boston: Harvard Health Publications, 2014. Credo Reference. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
Donnerstein, Edward. "Media Violence." Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities
and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender. Ed. Judith Worell. Oxford: Elsevier
Science & Technology, 2001. Credo Reference. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
Gilkerson, Luke. "Get the Latest Pornography Statistics." Covenant Eyes. N.p., 19 Feb. 2013.
Web. 17 Nov. 2015
"Impact of Cyber Bullying on Youths in The United States as of April 2014." Statista - The
Statistics Portal. Statista. 18 Nov 2015.
"Talking to Children About Social Media." Harvard Medical School Commentaries on Health.
HarvardHealthPublications. Boston: Harvard Health Publications, 2014. Credo Reference.Web.
19 Nov. 2015.
"Violence and the Media." Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies. London:
Bloomsbury, 2015. Credo Reference. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.