We live in a society where we pay more attention to what is happening to the rest of the world instead of paying attention to what’s going on around us. Thanks to social networking, we are able to know what is going around the entire world with just a click of a button. Social networking is the use of a dedicated website, to interact with other individual around the world by the use of the internet. The most basic social networking that we use are Facebook, Myspace, twitter, Kik, Whatsapp, tumbler, Reddit, and Google plus. Without us noticing, the social network has gradually affected our lives, so much that it is now a part of our everyday life. Not only has it affected our brain, but our lives as well. Social networking had cause many controversial problems to many people. Whether it is good for us or not, it is important that many would have their own opinion on the topic. The issue is that social network grabs our attention on what is not important, promotes stress, we remember more about what happens on social networks than in real life and damage our way of thinking. While other critics say social network. While other critics say social network promotes exploration, give us the opportunity for the world to listen to our opinions and promotes communication. Social Network was first a good invention that over the years has become bad for you and to the rest of our society

Many individuals have their own perspective of the social networking. One such person I had the opportunity to interview is my friend’s dad Oscar Naspud, whose occupation is accounting clerk. Oscar was first introduced to the world of social network by his friend, who persuade him to make a Facebook account. At first he was hesitant to use it because he believes that it was a thing that only teenager use and nothing more, but now his view, change, when he started using it, to the point that he believe everybody should use it. Since that day he first made an account for now, he has made multiple social networking account, which he would regularly check in a regular base. He used social networking as a way to contact his friends and to see what is trending right now, around the world. He often posts up status about his opinion on certain controversial subject on any of his accounts. We can see, that the social network has its benefits, which is that we are able to connect to peers, and understand what’s going around the world, while posting our opinion on them. When asking him about what change his view, he states “when I feel stress at work, I would rather see what my friend is doing more, but I put too much focus on it that I forget about my work.” (Naspud par 3)  He feels that going online, helps him relieve the tension or stress he has of being an accounting clerk and would rather prefer to do it, over this work. It is clear the benefits that social networking offers, but overall it isn’t a strong statement on why social network is good for us.

The good that the social network had given us does not outdo the danger that it promotes. In Oscar case, social network distract him from his work, because he pays too much attention on it than in his work. In John Medina book “Brain Rules”, it stated that isn’t necessarily his fault to pay attention to it because our brain is unable to focus more than 10 minutes at a certain thing. In short, we don’t like to pay attention to boring things. “Employee may show more interest in what their friend is posting them in their work tasks.”(Ali, 7) Which in, turn it means that social network promotes distraction because in these networks, we are able to see funny video, world news, people newest picture, famous people post and advertisement from our news feed. These Newsfeed we see, heavily influence us to spend long period of time on it. We and including myself have gotten distracted in social networks, to the point we lose our attention on it. It’s easy to log in to your account by using a computer that is everywhere in society or logging into our smartphone. When we lose our focus on our work, it promotes stress because we spend too much time on it, that we push the important things like our project, homework or work back. We argue to ourselves that we need more time to do our work, when we used all the time we had on the network. This is one main cause that prompts stress, and frustration, we spend too much time on things we don’t need to pay attention at all. Without us noticing, the social network has become a part of our life like Oscar, which is a scary idea because we put too much attention to it that we use it and we need it to relax our self. This is what’s happening, when we put too much attention on the social network, it promotes stress and takes a lot time from us.

We often use social network to gain more attention, which heavily affects the way we think. Today, we see too much immature post online, such as a foolish picture of themselves, and dumb post for people to gain a like’s. The more we see these repetitive immature post, the more we believe that it’s alright to do what they post, in the real world. This affects our thinking because we would end up harming an individual, without us knowing what we did is bad. This is often the case in this society, but what makes it worst is that those immature post influence our mind or ourselves to make more of this post. Those posts also greatly affect our memory. “Overall, the researchers found that Facebook status updates were one-and-a-half times more memorable than sentences from books and two-and-a-half times more memorable than faces.”(Mielach, 2) This indicated the harm, social network has done to our memory, by us remembering an immature post better than something that help us expands our knowledge. This goes back to our attention, we pay better attention on something that entertain us than a boring lesson. That influence us more to go back to these social network to remember those posts, for us to mention it to our friend’s. By the time we did that, we could have used our time to be more productive by studying and learning new topics for next class. However, it is clear to state that the way we think seriously impact our memory, but a social network manipulate the way we think to more immature thinking, thanks to the childish post that is constantly on the social network.

Another individual, who I was fortune to interview, who had a different view of social networking than Oscar. That person I have an interview is a close friend of mine named Andrea Zambrano. Like me, she enrolls at New York City College of Technology, in the field of architecture, technology program Andrea was once into social networking like all the other teen, she remembers that her friend told her to make an account at Aim in order to keep in touch with them outside of school. She admits that when making a Facebook account she would regularly check on Facebook almost every minute, she described “It was like a drug to me, that I couldn’t stop using it even if I tried to.”(Zambrano par 8) She mean by her quote, is that social network is a drug that was introduced by her friend, which she got too addicted to it. She would never really update a status because she wanted to keep her life to be hidden from the internet, but she used Facebook to see how her friend was doing with their lives. Her opinion of social networking has changed over the years, at first she felt that it was a dumb idea because it distracted us from our daily life. Andrea now, believe that it isn’t necessary a bad thing to have, but argue that you should don’t waste your entire life into it because life offers us more. She avoided having a social network account, which makes people around her to give her a weird look like she not normal and won’t believe her. It’s oblivious to note that like most people that social networking affects our attention by distracting us like my friend Andrea and Oscar. She believes that stress that we receive from the social network is dumb because we put too much focus, on how we would like the people online to view us, in order to get a single like.

In conclusion, social media is neither good nor bad, it’s the way we perceive it and the way we use it as. When social network was released it was a revolution that inspire people to communicate with one another over the web. At first it was good, but in recent time we have made it worse by the way we used it. For many, like Oscar, we use it to communicate with our friend, to post our opinion online and for relaxation from the stress he face from a hard day of work. It is important to note that the better the social network offers us, does not overdo the worse it does to us. Social network in general, harms our way of thinking, memory, attention and it promotes stress. We used social network in all the bad way, by distracting ourselves from work, due to procrastination. Which in turn influences us, what we see online to change our way of thinking of the worst. If you trained your mind to use a social network in a better way than I see no harm in it. Like my friend Andrea Zambrano said, social network isn’t bad, but just don’t put all your time into it because life offers us more.

Work Cited

Ali, Syed Noman. “Social Media – A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?” Social Media Today. Social Media Today, 08 Aug. 2012. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.

Andrea Zambrano. Personal Interview. 17 November 2015

Gibbs, Mark. “Social Networking, Ignorance, and Apathy.” Lexis Nexis. Network World, 8 Dec. 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.

Howard, Jacqueline. “This Is How The Internet Is Rewiring Your Brain.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 30 Oct. 2013. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.

Medina, John. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Seattle, WA: Pear, 2008. Print.

Mielach, David. “How Facebook Affects Your Memory.” Business News Daily. Business News Daily, 15 Jan. 2013. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.

TIERNEY, JOHN. “Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks.” New York Times 19 Mar. 2013: D3. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.

Oscar Naspud. Personal Interview. 18 November 2015