The Impact Of Social Media

There is no doubt that dramatic changes have been made in civilization even in the past century, due to the advancement of science and technology. It is now possible to travel in outer space, communicate with someone halfway across the world almost instantaneously, cure diseases we once did not even know existed, and even clone organisms using DNA samples. However, with these improvements in the quality of life come some setbacks. Social media has made face-to-face communication awkward and nearly obsolete, and our reliance on computers and the Internet has become so great that without it, the world we live in would be significantly impaired. Thirty years ago, before the Internet became as ubiquitous as it is now, talking to your best friend …show more content…
Unfortunately, while instant communication via social media has made communicating with others much faster and easier, actually meeting up with a person and talking to them is a convention that has fallen by the wayside. Many people, especially the younger generations, display this: they are constantly on their phones, laptops, or tablets in public, but when it comes to interacting with others in person, they suddenly tense up, not knowing quite what to do. This phenomenon of social awkwardness is caused by the pseudo-anonymity that social media provides: if I post something online, even if my name and picture is attached to it, it still seems that it is less of a representation of me as if I had said it in person. With this “anonymity” come problems, such as …show more content…
Most of today’s business and government operations rely on the Internet, so if anything were to happen to compromise this worldwide network, there is no doubt that our world would become compromised as well. We have become so dependent on computers, which can not only access this seemingly infinite database, but run programs that operate machinery, store and encrypt data, and so much more. Essential and classified government documents are stored on computers, not to mention the industrial machinery and medical equipment that is computer-operated. With computers running nearly everything in the private and public sectors, they are essential to everyday life, and it is hard to imagine a world without computers. The Y2K scare is an important example of this: by the year 2000, society had become so reliant on technology to run important operations that virtually the whole world prepared for a catastrophe. In the event that computers did not recognize January 1, 2000 as the beginning of the new millennium due to the practice of displaying two digits instead of four to represent a year (e.g. 1/1/00 instead of 1/1/2000), all of these systems would be thrown off significantly, disrupting the basis of civilization. However, before there were these complex computer-based infrastructures, the world had to keep important records on paper, seek answers to everyday