The Cons of Social Media

Last week we talked about some of the pros of social media, and to be perfectly honest, it was pretty difficult to come up with a full blog post of positives. We talk about the negatives of social media so much more often that today's post practically wrote itself, but we still asked the good people of the internet for their thoughts, so without further ado, we give you the cons of social media.

The first negative of social media is the harmful effects it can have on your physical health. With the dominance of social media comes an increase in the time we spend staring at screens. Screens emit blue light, which is well documented to have adverse effects on our vision and sleep patterns. Yes, Facebook could actually be making you blind.

Social media can also have negative effects on your mental health and relationships. It distracts you from work and school (yes, college students, your professors see you scrolling under your desk). Social media has shortened our attention spans as a culture, as well as given us misconceptions about what is real versus what is fake. *Cough Kardashians cough* Those misconceptions feed a comparison culture, where scrolling through Instagram, for example, can make you feel inadequate or like you're missing out on something. This, in turn, feeds into a vicious cycle of people not being transparent on social media because they want to appear a certain way or seem cooler than they really are. Trust us, they aren't that cool in real life - their mom took those pictures.

People are also straight up mean on social media. A lot of people feel like they can bully people or say things they wouldn't actually say to someone in real life, just because they can hide behind their computers and typically face few consequences for their trolling.

And that cute guy's ex-girlfriend you were stalking last week? God forbid you accidentally double tap her picture from 142 weeks ago.

For all its pros, social media has at least as many cons. So, is it worth it? We leave that up to you to decide. In the meantime, we'll be over here petting real dogs instead of looking at them on Instagram.