Social Media Is The New Smoking
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Health and Wellness

Social Media Is The New Smoking

How did we let it get this far?

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Social Media Is The New Smoking
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Magazines now have a relationship with Snapchat. You can subscribe to these magazines and find that they have new material for you to read and watch every day. For this article, I did a little experiment. To choose a magazine from Snapchat, I first glanced at the titles, cover photos, and headlines.

The first magazine that Snapchat advertised was “Daily Mail.” You would assume by the title that this magazine might bring you up-to-date on national news or any other pieces of information that might be relevant to the average American’s daily life. Yet, the cover photo was that of a celebrity and the headline read, “Ariel risks a malfunction.” This magazine was the first on the list. Does this mean that celebrity wardrobe malfunctions are the top priority reading material for today’s youth? Who decides these things?

I started flipping through to see what other magazines are trending. They advertised things like: “Kendall Jenner trends” and “My BF and I can’t find a place to have sex.” It worries me that my little cousin who is thirteen--and quite impressionable--reads crap like this every day and is brainwashed into thinking that these topics are what matters in life. Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook are advertising this sort of information more than they do useful or valuable information. What consequences will this have for this generation of kids when they have grown to be the adults of America?

I searched for a headline that might provide some sort of intelligence. I found “CNN: The Update” with the headline “Caribbean Braces for Yet Another Hurricane.” Not only was this headline the only one that didn’t involve sports, the Emmys, popular trends, or sex, it was the only headline that gave any sort of real, raw, useful information to the world we live in.

However, once clicking on the article, I found very, very biased articles on politics. Most political ads or articles that I've seen on Facebook either lean too far to the left or right. Journalism needs to be completely unbiased and fact-checked in order for our impressionable society the allowance to take the facts and build an opinion on our own. But this is not how the world works. It's very difficult to find the truth and reliable sources nearly anywhere on the internet.

Everything on Snapchat seemed so fake to me. I felt thankful that I hadn’t fallen into the trap of today’s social media frenzy. I am so glad that I didn’t have the urge to click on any of those magazines. I've clicked on articles that have "facts" that are not facts at all. Titles that read, "Facts About Your Body That You Never Knew" may have some merit, but I knew--for a fact--that some of them were completely false. I wonder, how is this ignorance released to the public? Don't these publishers care that they're spreading more and more ignorance to the world every day?

I am also a little sickened.

I worry that this obsession with false realities provided by the fame and celebrity will only continue to distance people from the real world.

People will spend their spare time reading Cosmo, watching Netflix, talking about Selena Gomez, rather than reading a non-fiction book that might teach them something because it is less entertaining to do so.

More and more, we see people with their heads bent over their cell phones. As our attention spans shrink, ignorance grows.

We are a generation that needs constant entertainment, constant stimulation.

We are a generation that finds it difficult to sit in silence for too long.

We are over-indulgent and spoiled.

I rarely find a person walking on campus that does not either have headphones in their ears or a phone in their hands. Why can't we enjoy the quiet? Why can't we allow ourselves to be alone with our thoughts for too long?

Has anyone ever thought that this progressive shrinking of attention spans and inability to quiet the mind may be a leading factor in the rise of anxiety and ADHD in our very busy generation? Maybe if we didn't constantly need music playing in the background, or our favorite TV show to fall asleep to, we wouldn't be so damned wound up all the time.

Anyway, I clicked on the first headline to see this chick “Ariel” make some sort of “risky” outfit decision. I clicked on the article and saw a series of pictures of her in a double-split dress walking on the red carpet. All I thought was, “Who cares?” I continued to flip through the virtual magazine.

One after another, I saw articles of different celebrities in this dress and that. Then I saw an article about Kylie Jenner posting a revealing lingerie picture on Instagram. I thought, “This family is a perfect example of how materialistic and absorbed we are as a society.” The article provided me with pictures and paragraphs attempting to interest me in this girl. Or assumed I was already interested. Which is a fair assumption, considering most people are.

Media in today’s world is mostly the same: full of celebrities, biases, and ignorance. Sometimes, I’m not sure what is real and what is fabricated and exaggerated. I wonder about the news anchors and editors who let this fake news out into the world. Do they not know what they’re doing?

I wonder who lets these celebrities be the center of attention, and how it is possible to not feel anything about it. I think what it all boils down to is greed. They want to write something entertaining that will get attention. Either that or they've been brainwashed themselves and genuinely do not know the harm they're causing the world.

Then, I have to wonder why so many people will give it any attention. The media has most likely told them all their life what the ideal form of beauty is, how they’re supposed to act, speak, dress, and what would make them more desirable to the world.

They will continue to click on these articles because everyone wants to be desired, but it’s the strong-willed, self-aware, confident and smart types of people who will see those articles, walk away from them, and go pick up a book instead.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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