The term social media is widely used today. Social media is a growing phenomenon that has a significant impact on the human mind. Social media refers primarily to electronic communication methods that enable users to share content efficiently and quickly. The use of social media is increasing, but users don’t realize how damaging it is for their mental health to be exposed to this technology. Social media can affect our cognitive development and can even change the way we think. Social media is undoubtedly a convenient way to interact with others, but we’ve become so engulfed by technology that face-to-face communication has lost its importance. Face-to-face communication is important because it’s more effective and can satisfy our social needs. Social media, then, has become so embedded in our society as to affect our behavior and cognitive processes.

Each tool has a different impact on the society. Social media users who display aggressive behavior can experience depression and even transfer aggressive behaviors to other dimensions. These actions include posting only positive things about oneself, tagging your loved ones and transferring materials into virtual environments with no permission. According to World Journal on Educational Technology, such aggressiveness has been linked to depression. Self-esteem loss is a common cause of depression in teens who compare their appearance to those who are thinner, prettier or more popular. Comparing the lives of friends via social media can lead to envy, especially if other people seem happier and more successful than them. This envy, if not managed early enough, can become jealousy. It is dangerous to encourage jealousy by posting content that will make the “friend” jealous. In addition to making others feel inferior, curating an image that is perfect can be unhealthy for people who do this regularly. When they receive positive feedback about their social media profiles, they may be worried that their friends won’t accept them for who they really are. Digital world views are a distorted version of reality. Social media allows people to be rude without having to take responsibility for what they do, because of the privacy. Many users are constantly exposed to aggressive behavior, and they will react in the same way to any act of aggression. The pathological behavior takes on new dimensions. In the end, online aggression and its consequences are more important than social media’s original purpose: connecting people.

The Official Journal of the World Psychiatry Association reports that digital media use may lead to shallower reasoning. Instant information means that you don’t have to exert more mental effort to access it. In a recent research, it was examined how information as well as cognitive strategies propagated across various types of networks. The undergraduate students studied had access the answers provided by highly interconnected networks. In a recent study, researchers looked at how information and cognitive strategies spread through different kinds of networks. Students had access to answers provided by highly-connected networks. This study shows that people adopt a less cognitively intensive strategy to solve a problem when he or she has the answer at hand. In another study, researchers examined the impact of different communication methods (face-to face, audio, video, and instant messages) on feelings of affiliation and bonding among a group college students. Researchers studied the effects of digital communication by coding interpersonal cues between two friends. The researchers found that the amount of interpersonal cues shared in digital communications was lower. This decline was also associated with a decreased feeling of bonding, as well nonverbal cues. One concern is that being online can cause people to feel like their peers are evaluating them. It could be a problem, especially for adolescents. They are highly sensitive to social exclusion and evaluation. In one study, a group that believed they were watched by a fellow peer in a research setting displayed higher levels of arousal. In a second study, older adolescents (aged between 15 and 18 years) performed worse on a cognitive test when they believed they were being observed by a current peer. Both experiments indicate that peer evaluation can increase alertness and decrease performance in adolescents. In a second study, adolescents were asked to respond to peer rejection or acceptance in a task simulating an Internet chatroom. The pupils dilation showed that they were more emotionally and cognitively reactive to rejection feedback. Participants who reacted to rejection feedback strongly reported feeling socially disconnected in their daily lives. These findings suggest that online interactions can have real-world effects on adolescents’ cognitive processes.

Finally, in a broad sense, social platforms have an impact on attentional capacities and the memory process. Internet links, notifications, prompts and other digital media provide an endless stream of options for influencing our attentional capacity. In order to encourage people to multitask, a study examined the cognitive impact of multitasking. People who multi-task extensively were compared with people who don’t. It was surprising to find that people who multi-tasked heavily with media performed worse at task switching tests. The findings were further examined and revealed that task-switching was difficult because of an increased tendency to be distracted by irrelevant environmental stimuli. It is crucial to take into account the long-term effects of multi-tasking media via digital devices and the immediate cognitive abilities of those who do this. In a meta-analysis involving 41 studies, it was found that multi-tasking negatively affected overall cognitive performance. Recent studies confirm this, showing that short-term exposure to an online environment with many hyperlinks can reduce attentional capacity for a prolonged period after leaving the site. However, reading a magazine doesn’t produce such deficits. Overall, evidence suggests that multitasking using digital media has no positive impact on our multitasking abilities in other contexts. Instead, it may reduce them by reducing their ability to ignore distractions.

Social media can also replace certain memory systems in humans. Social media, by design, is an internet-based platform that allows users to quickly share content electronically. The content can include photos, videos, documents, and personal data. National Center for Biotechnology Information has published a report that shows how online information can alter memory processes. It explains how accessing information online makes people more likely remember the URL of where the fact was found, instead of the fact itself. The Internet can be used to find information, and people may become more reliant upon it. Some might argue that the Internet is just a tool for external memory. Since millennia people have used transactive memory to share information with others in their family, community, etc. This allows them to remember only the source, instead of trying to store the entire information. Transactive memory is beneficial for groups, but it can reduce the ability of an individual to remember the details of externally stored data. The reason for this is that people who use transactive memories for “cognitive deloading” are less likely to allocate cognitive resources to remembering information. Internet, however, seems to bypass “transactional” aspects that are inherent in other forms of cognitive dumping. Internet users are not required to keep unique information (as in most human societies) for other people to use. Second, unlike any other transactive memories, the Internet can store and retrieve virtually all facts. Individuals do not have to remember which information is externally saved or where it’s located. Internet acts as a “supernormal stimulation” for the transactive memory, and all other options of cognitive offloading are rendered redundant by its new capabilities.

Social media has a surprising impact on our mentality and behavior. Social media aggressive behaviors can lead to depression and self-esteem loss. How can social media connect the public when this is taken into consideration? Social media can disconnect the society despite their illusions of connection. Social media sites have a negative impact on the cognitive development of adolescents who are considered to be “prime technology users”. Young adults are less likely to engage with cognitive processes when they have access to information and content. A lack of interaction with others can lead to a feeling of loneliness, as well as a decrease in bonding. Moreover, the constant evaluation of one’s performance can reduce the ability to do a good job. In addition to all of this, users are known to be triggered by rejection feedback. They also feel socially disconnected. Social media influence multi-tasking and memory processes from a population perspective. Digital media can reduce our ability multitasking by making it harder to ignore distractions. Media can also store information so people don’t have to rely on their brains. Social media has a major impact on human behavior and thinking.