Social Media And Social Skills Essay

The way social media affects people who struggle with social skills, has been studied many times, and in many cases it shows positive results. One study was conducted among people who are considered shy and how it relates with social media. One thing that stood out in the study was that the shy Facebook user’s seemed to have less friends but interacted more with the ones they did have than the observed non-shy user’s (Orr). This showed that the shy user’s were able to use social media to help compensate for their social anxiety since it is a more comfortable environment online, thus being beneficial for them. Another study of the socially impaired involves a young man with autism and how he uses social media. The young man struggled with social …show more content…
The first negative side of social media to avoid is the risk to privacy and security. The first step to take to protect against security threats is to create very strong passwords for all accounts that are hard to hack. When using social networks, users must learn how to use privacy settings very well, and how to control who gets to see what information. Users of social media must avoid sharing certain information, such as place of birth, age, or birthday. This information can be used to steal someone’s identity. If a social media user feels the need to share this information, they must be careful of who can see it, such as restricting the info to friends only. Also users need to be careful to only add friends they really know, instead of complete strangers, and only share information that is safe for anyone to see, because nothing is temporary on the internet. Users must not share information that tells when no one will be at the users home, such as vacation dates, because it could provide enough information to a burglar to rob the home (“Fact Sheet 35”). There are many precautions people must take in order to safely use social media, but with enough common sense and education of the threats, it becomes very