Social media is an important aspect of our lives in many ways. It keeps us in touch with friends, loved ones, and helps us meet new people. It also helps us make a name for ourselves and show others how creative we can be. A few examples of these sites are Facebook, Twitter, and Dailymotion.However the most impactful site by today’s standards is none other than Youtube. Youtube is a place where anyone can post videos and share them with the world ranging from educational, comedy, or animation. Other individuals have access to these videos at anytime they please and can comment on how they feel about the video they just watched. Youtube can be used for business purposes and for those who become Youtube Partners and Youtube Partners can even make profit from the content they produce. While all of this seems like nothing but positive points about Youtube, it also seems to suffer from many things that negatively affect other social media sites such as Cyber – Bullying, hate comments towards an individual, and discrimination against race, gender, and religion. I assert that Youtube affects the behaviors of many individuals in a negative, cruel way. In this essay, I will perform the following: provide information about Youtube’s effect on an individual, how it could affect the completion of daily tasks, and how it can change someone’s mind frame entirely.

Second, Youtube seems like a harmless little website in which you just watch or upload videos for the world to see but in actuality, many people don’t see harmful it can be to someone’s well being. For instance, young adults who use social media sites such as Youtube are the ones at a bigger risks than most individuals due to the fact that they are exposed to hateful, cruel comments that they don’t want to hear. One quote that supports this claim is, “ Social media data such as weblog contents are more promising sources to gauge the public mood. Despite the diversity of content at an individual level, the aggregate of millions of social media data points may provide a pragmatic representation of public mood”(Won, Par. 3). In other words, today’s media can change the way people see themselves because they will get the feeling that they’re imperfect and hideous. After talking to one of my peers who frequently uses Youtube on a daily basis, he had this to say, “ I don’t feel that people should interact with each other in such a negative way because in the end, they just come as insecure jerks. For example, a young girl named Amanda Todd created a Youtube video before she committed suicide and the viewers in the comment section, rather than respect her memory, they instead said that she deserved to die” (Nazmus, par. 3). In other words, rather than using the comment section for a tool for feedback for the content creator or create decent conversation, people nowadays just use to complain about random things they don’t like or bring down others just to brighten up their own day. Some content creators on Youtube are afraid of doing certain things to diversify their videos because they don’t know how their audience will react to it. It seems that Youtube is slowly becoming a site where viewers just sit down and complain about everything and enjoy oppressing video makers into doing whatever they want them to. Online bullying is never ok in any sense and maybe these few individuals don’t see what their doing but, what they don’t realize how their actions are affecting others in negative ways. I have also seen some of these instances when I go Youtube as a casual user and content creator. Some of things that I’ve been exposed to in recent memory have been controversies involving equality in Gaming, which mostly has to do with GamerGate and radical feminists such as Anita Sarkeesian. But what does this have to do with Cyber – Bullying on Youtube? Well, quite a lot actually. People like Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn act as if they are victims of online bullying but they only do so just to get attention while young teens or adults are actually being attacked for being who they are.

While Cyber – Bullying on social media sites such as Youtube may be hard to avoid, there are many ways to get around the negativity that occurs on the site everyday. For instance, if you are a content creator who isn’t very fond of negative criticism, then maybe disable the comments altogether so you don’t need to be exposed to them. Mean comments usually stem from personal insecurities or for one’s selfish desires for joy. Another option would be just to ignore it, you should know that things other people say about you aren’t true anyway so you should just shake it off and move on with your day. You shouldn’t let it bother you to the point that you fall into a state of depression, which could eventually lead to suicide. But, you can also use Youtube to lighten up your day such as watching some comedy videos or listening to your favorite songs to relax. One quote that also adds on to this is, “YouTube brings benefits to children and teenagers, including enhancing communication, broadening social connections, and learning technical skills” (McBride, Par. 3). This means that Youtube can be used for a lot more than just traditional means that most people take it for. Another benefit of using Youtube is the fact that you could easily spread awareness about serious topics such as Cyber – Bullying so others who may not know about these problems or at least know what to expect when using any social media outlet. Lastly, if you are concerned about the world may think of you as a person, then maybe it would be a good idea to practice good common sense while on the internet. Once you upload a video on the internet, it will be there for a long time so the best thing to do is to consider what you are going to put on Youtube beforehand.

In conclusion, I have argued that Youtube affects the behaviors of many individuals in a negative, cruel way and could even drive someone into depression or even suicide. Even though Youtube contains a large amount of vulgar language that may offend people and make them feel horrible about themselves, I feel that the individuals that use Youtube will eventually learn how to respect each other as users of the site. As human beings, we shouldn’t be so harsh and cruel to each other considering that there is so much violence in today’s world as it is. So many young lives were taken due to the dangers of social media sites such as Youtube and the people who use it. Hopefully, as time passes on, young teens and adults don’t have to worry about Cyber – Bullying and can live comfortable, normal lives and could feel; confident about who they are as a person. In my opinion, Youtube should just be a place where anyone of any race, gender, and religion could enjoy themselves with watching online videos of their own interests.

Works CIted:

Won, Hong-Hee, et al. “Predicting National Suicide Numbers With Social Media Data.” Plos ONE 8.4 (2013): 1-6. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2015.

McBride, Deborah L. “Risks and Benefits of Social Media for Children and Adolescents.” N.p., n.d. Web.

Tanway, Nazmus, Interview. 8 Dec. 2015