Social media is great for a lot of reasons: it can educate us, bring us closer together to those who we admire, it’s cheap entertainment, and new friends are just a click away. Another way social media positively impacts us, is it can help us with today’s world. For example, “social media is an integral part of today’s society” according to an article on Teenshiled.com.

Although social media positively impacts resilience, it can also negatively impact it too. For example, infographic states that social media “Takes away time we can spend face to face” This shows that social media can negatively impact a person because instead of spending time with their family or friends, they rely on technology for interaction and entertainment. Addiction to social media can, and will, take away time from the things that are important to you. A lot of studies, like one found on Time.com, even show that social media can make you dumber.

Another negative impact of social media is cyber bullying. Many people decide to bully other people behind a screen. Cyber bullying is a major issue that affects many teenagers’ lives. Bullying is definitely not right, but it’s harder when someone you don’t know keeps harassing you. It even makes it harder to seek help, or confront them, because you don’t know who they are.

What many people don’t know is that social media makes a lot of money off of people. According to Social Networking “ Social network ad spending reached $23.68 billion in 2015 and should reach $35.98 billion by the end of 2017.” Sites like Facebook. Twitter, Tumblr etc. might be free, but they still get money from users that have accounts. So, you might think no money is being made from you, but the truth is these sites and other social media sites are making money off of your entertainment.

Another thing that’s wrong about social media is that your privacy could be invaded. Whatever you post on your social media site is public, so it can be seen by anyone. Many jobs actually look at their candidates post to determine what interests this person. So, if you are a person that posts problematic things, just remember it’s public and everyone can see it, even your future boss.

Social media is a great place to explore yourself, but it also has negative parts to it. Just make sure you’re careful.