Online social media has been around for some time now, it has made great strides in how we connect with people, and share our lives with each other. I have a friend who after 20+ years was able to connect with their estranged brother, I have even made contact again with my childhood penfriend in the U.S. and for that social media such as facebook can be life enriching.
The darkside of social media has now begun to rear it’s head and having a very negative impact on the health and wellbeing of it’s users.
in recent times we have begun to realise the detrimental effect that social media has in terms of bullying and hate crimes committed by a small number of people often referred to as Trolls.
It now seems that the dark side of social media is reaching out even further.
we are all aware with facebook in particular that what ever you post or a page you set up your friends, family and people connected to you can click on the “like” button. This tiny little button is now having serious consequences for the self-esteem of anyone who uses social media. It seems now that people are beginning to value themselves on how many likes they have, so rather than valuing ourselves has now come down to the number of likes we get. The research that was conducted to discover this suggests that the more likes and comments a person has on their facebook page or profile the better they feel about themselves.
Should social media really be used this way? shouldn’t the way we value ourselves be dependent on our own self-perception rather than the approval of others?
If you find yourself experiencing low self-esteem, ThreeLeaves offers courses local to Lancashire that can provide you with the skills to value yourself on what you think and not what others think. for more info visit www.threeleaves.org.uk
What are your thoughts and comments? And if you decide not to like or comment on this post, that is absolutely fine.
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