Is social media worth it ? Pt.2

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People who grew up with the Internet are falling prey to the radicalizing elements that have found a home on Facebook normally intelligent people are willingly engaging in peddling fake news stories

because it makes them feel good or they know it will make others angry what's going on here there are a number of factors not the least of which being a sophisticated disinformation campaign by foreign nations

but the main problem is the effect of social media itself on the human brain when we engage with social media on a daily basis we actively shorten our attention span and fragment our productivity

how many times have you been working on a project or reading a book and think I'll just check Facebook real quick and then suddenly all your momentum is out the window and you have to drag yourself away from your phone

and force yourself to start working again this is incredibly inefficient but it's a very hard habit to break why because social media is highly addicting it's been compared to a slot machine you pull the lever and you're rewarded

with an outcome either positive or negative gambling can be an addiction too but the difference is you leave the slot machine in the casino whereas your phone is with you all the time it's hard to break a habit when it's right

there taunting you with memes and sassy corporate Twitter accounts studies have shown that social media usage has a negative effect on productivity attention span and mental health in general leading to increased

rates of depression and anxiety and more recently a drastic uptick in extremist ideology the people we are friends with on Facebook are very rarely real or meaningful friends they're just people we've collected along

the way with no real intention of ever communicating with them or friends we made in grade school who have since drifted away if we truly just want to keep up with friends real friends and limit the negative aspects

of a platform like Facebook we should get rid of the dozens or hundreds of people we haven't spoken to in years make our accounts visible to friends only and remove the apps from our phone you want to send a message

or check in on somebody make it deliberate sit down at your computer and send a message without the temptation to always check our social media when we're out in public or just sitting around it makes it much easier to live

a focused productive happier life and with the recent data breach at Facebook which compromised 50 million accounts it wouldn't be surprising to see people abandon the platform altogether when all you're getting out of the experience

is extremists fake news heated arguments and targeted advertisements it doesn't make much sense to stick around especially if your personal data is at risk of being compromised!