This document discusses the debate around the impacts of social media. While some argue social media harms society by reducing privacy and face-to-face communication, the author believes social media benefits communication. The document examines how teenagers and young adults are heavily attached to social media and their phones. It also explores privacy concerns like oversharing personal details, cyberstalking, and catfishing. However, the author ultimately argues that social media brings people together and helps communication more than it harms. Research on its impacts has produced mixed results and failed to establish clear causation.

1. Kaylee Poehlein
11/20/15
Dr. Harold Blanco
Debate Research Paper
Social Media Explosion
In modern society the aspect of social media is up for constant debate on whether it is
harmful or helpful for those who partake in it. On one side, social media is arguably harmful to
society because it violates privacy and reduces communication among those who update their
statuses for everything that they do, but that is not my stance. I do not believe that
communications between those who are constantly updating social media have become
dissected.
“If you take technology away, you’ll lose people in minutes.” (Clemmitt 87). Our parents
that grew up in a world that didn’t have modern social media and technologies are more partial
to keeping their phones on them, as it helps them stay more aware as to what is going on in the
world as well as keeping up with their social circles. It is an eminent key issue in this article that
communications between close friends, old friends, and even strangers suffer from the deficit of
face-to-face conversation.
When you take away the aspect of modern technology or social media from people who
are not comfortable without their phones/tablets/laptop being somewhere on their person, the
environment between those in question then becomes a kind of awkward tension, which is
heavily avoided by all people. It’s not unusual to see people at dinner, communicating via text or
social media with people who did not go out of their way to see them, which brings the issues to
another key point: People who can’t go ten minutes without checking their Facebook, Twitter,
Snapchat, or Instagram updates.

2. Teenagers and twenty-somethings have grown attached to their phones as if it were his or
her child, per say. They sleep with their phones in bed with them, and wake up in the middle of
the night to answer texts and check late-night social media updates. They update their Snapchat
stories to reflect the time, weather, and location of where it was that they took the photo or video.
While this aspect is more modern that the article was dated, it is still important to the aspect that
contributes and reattributes the previously stated fact that young adults are attached to their
phones/other technological devices. They even become “anxious” when they go without having
their phones near them.
If you are ever in an uncomfortable situation with someone you aren’t comfortable with,
it has become a social norm to pull out your cell phone and check social media to ease the
tension in the room. If you’re ever alone in a crowded place, it’s the easiest option to pull out
your phone and pretend to be texting or to scroll through social media to pass the time. This
method of coping for most people, as this generation is afraid to be disconnected. Losing cell
phone service or running out of data is our biggest fear.
The benefits of social media extend very far. Social media outlets keep you updated with
people you haven’t talked to in a while, allow you to stay up to date with social, economic,
political, and popular issues, and is a very good way to pass the time out of boredom. Easily
though, Facebook and Twitter updates become like a public diary full of useless information.
People will go online to tell their friends and followers that they cleaned out the refrigerator after
they put their kids to bed – which is not something that you would (probably) bring up in regular
conversation. This brings us to the concerns of having social media.
People go on social media and update things about their private life that they would not
regularly broadcast. As mentioned earlier, people sometimes take their status updates a tad bit

3. too far (on Facebook more often than Twitter). Social media profiles are very detailed. Facebook
asks for your hometown, high school, college, profession, family members, relationship status,
phone number, and even your birthday. This leads to extreme privacy violations, if proper
security measures are not taken. Facebook and Twitter allow you to not let anyone view your
profile unless you accept their request, but oftentimes people are not careful about who they
accept. They will set their profiles to private and then accept anyone that is brave enough to send
them a request. And when people are not careful may be subject to “cyber-stalking” or
“catfishing”.
“Cyber-stalking” is a method that is like real-life stalking, but only on your online profile.
It’s a very lazy way to get the same job done. Someone can sit outside your house and watch you
through the window folding your laundry or working out, or they can just wait until you update
your social media to tell what you did with your day. Cyber-stalkers check out your high school,
your place of work, and your relationship status. Sometimes, they can even know you better than
your own mother. If you make your phone number on Facebook public, you may even be subject
to harassment calls and text messages. “Catfishing” is the action of someone making a false
social media profile and attempting to hold a social media or text conversation with you, all
while pretending to be someone else. Oftentimes, people go into committed relationships with
someone that they haven’t even met. You can become anyone you want when you know you’ll
never have to meet the person in real life, which could prove to be dangerous, depending on the
information you give out to the total stranger. Ironically, if someone believes they are being
“catfished”, they will “cyber-stalk” them to see if they check out.
In the article, Clemmitt stated, “Western commentators have claimed that Iranians used
Twitter to organize protests after a contested June 2009 election. But, in fact, Twitter was used

4. only minimally, according to Golnaz Esfandiari, an Iranian-born blogger and senior
correspondent for the U.S.-funded agency Radio Free Europe, which broadcasts to Eastern
Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.” (86). This statement alones explains how social
media effects democratic, as well as other systems of government, societies. They were using
Twitter to organize political protests against the electors. This leads one to wonder what other
kind of events might have been organized on Twitter or any other social media outlets, and why
these events were not flagged as a matter of national security and stopped? There are so many
fake profiles, and anything could be organized or plotted on them.
MY STANCE
As a firm supporter of social media, my eyes were opened by the facts I discovered in
Clemmitt’s article, as many of my fellow classmates were as well. But I stand by my opinion,
and I urge you to do so too. Social media brings modern cultures together. It closes the bridge
between different social circles and cultures, and forms friendships based off of related interests
that probably wouldn’t happen in face-to-face confrontations. “Claims about the damaging
effects of social media on individual human behavior, societal morale, and mass processes are
usually passionate. However, research has failed to produce a diversity of participants or more
stable longitudinal data, and often because of that, it does little to establish causation beyond
correlation.” (Belangee 123). This quote leads to back up the fact that they only researched a
certain amount of people, and these facts are not generally true. I believe that social media is
beneficial to society, as we, as a whole are addicted to social media for all of the best reasons.
“The Internet is often used for communication and relationship building with others and
may be used for developing friendships and romantic interests. Relationships built over the
Internet may develop and change differently from those based on real-life interactions. While

5. pop culture is just beginning to accept online relationships, some individuals may feel the need to
hide online relationships due to the offline reactions of friends and peers. As Internet
relationships become more popular, it is important to discover the effect they have on the
individual and society.” (Thayer 432). Aforementioned, the communications aspect of this
certain part of social media is not at risk with young adults in social media. Young adults are not
at risk for altered, botched communications with the “problem” of modern social media. If
anything, it’s helping communication. People converse over Facebook, Twitter, and texting and,
since they’ve already gotten all the awkward conversations over without meeting face-to-face,
it’s easier to communicate with one another when in person meetings happen. Social media
keeps you updated on what is going on in everyday life, and communication is easier.
Communicating is easier when you don’t have to talk to a person and suffer through the
awkward tension.
“Effective privacy management can be difficult when interacting on Facebook because
people's networks are diverse and the privacy management practices are often varied for different
people based on the relationships, roles, contexts, and the functions of interactions.” (Child,
Jeffrey T.). The privacy is safe because Facebook is your own personalized experience. People
can choose the privacy that they allow other Facebook users to see.

6. Works Cited
Belangee, Susan, Marina Bluvshtein, and Daniel Haugen. "Cybersocial Connectedness: A
Survey Of Perceived Benefits And Disadvantages Of Social Media Use." Journal Of
Individual Psychology 71.2 (2015): 123. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Nov.
2015.
Clemmitt, M. (2013, January 25). Social media explosion. CQ Researcher, 23, 81-104. Retrieved
.. from http://library.cqexpress.com/.
Thayer, Stacy E., and Sukanya Ray. "Online Communication Preferences Across Age, Gender,
And Duration Of Internet Use." Cyberpsychology & Behavior 9.4 (2006): 432. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 20 Nov. 2015