The Effect of Technology on the Populace

 Social media has created an image for young teens that isn’t realistic. Social media influencers and celebrities are a big part of the issue. Companies are also aware of the consequences that young and old individuals might have but continue anyway. These influencers and celebrities are promoting products to teenagers that don’t really work and are all a lie. At the end of the day it all leads to money and it is a huge problem in today’s society all over the world. The use of social media is misleading young teens to believe they need to look a certain way or that they need a certain product in their lives. It has caused health issues such as anxiety and low self-esteem. These social media websites are being misused and becoming a problem in the life of young teens. This topic will be discussing the issues social media and technology have on young adults and children, how companies and celebrities take hold of their followers wrongly, and how social media can be bad for us all in the long run.

 For many young teens, social media has become a part of their daily lives. Social media has become an addiction to many teens because of how much they abuse these websites. Young teenagers rely on social media for approval and think they have to be what society believes they should be like. They are constantly attached to their phones while being on these social media websites. This brings problems to the life of many teenagers giving them self-doubt and low self-esteem when constantly being on social media. According to the article, ‘How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers’, experts worry that social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem. This is because of how teenagers are constantly comparing themselves to others who portray a perfect body image or life. The article also included a survey conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health that asked people 14-24 years of age in the United Kingdom how social media platforms impacted their health and wellbeing. The survey results were shocking and it said, “Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all led to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, and loneliness.” These are all social media websites constantly used by teens all around the world.

 The way the social media marketing works is these branding companies reach out to influencers who have a huge following account. Such as Instagram influencers who have thousands or even millions of followers making them popular and important. Young teenagers look up to these influencers and will believe almost anything they say because of how credulous and vulnerable they are. That is why they are called social media influencers because they find ingenious ways of influencing many of these young teens. According to the Jelle Fastenau in her article Under the Influence: The Power of Social Media Influencers, “Promoting products via social media influencers can be categorized as a form of subconscious marketing. For ages, brands and advertisers have been seeking to shape consumers thought, attitudes, and behavior, without us even being aware of it”. With that being said, Instagram is one of the most used social media websites used for marketing products. Fastenau goes on to say, “The biggest platform for influencer marketing can be found on Instagram. Last year saw a whopping 12.9 million brand sponsored influencer posts and that number is estimated to double in 2018, creating an estimated market size of nearly 1.7 billion dollars.” Social media marketers are taking advantage of these websites to get people like teenagers to buy their products with the help of celebrities and Influencers.

Social media influencers are portraying a perfect life. They don’t show the reality of things and that is why young teens are so easily blinded by this perfect image. Influencers such as Instagram models or even celebrities will post pictures of themselves daily, promoting supplements and products such as detox teas. These Instagram models or celebrities will be sponsored by these companies such as Teamiblends and say that they drink them every day and believe it’s what has helped them achieve a flat stomach when in reality its false advertisement. Companies are using Instagram influencers to sell their products because they know their followers will want to buy whatever it is that the influencers claim to be using to have a nice body. This is a hidden source of advertisement that young teens are being easily influenced to purchase.

 Teami Blends is a wide spread tea detox company who endorses celebrities with great bodies and Instagram influencers to promote their brand. They claim to call their products Skinny Tea. They target people who want to lose weight and look up to celebrities such as, Cardi B, Kylie Jenner, Khloe Kardashian, and China (Baby momma of Rob Kardashian and Tyga). Celebrities have a huge fan base of many young teens that are looking up to these women as role models. An example on a social media platform is Cardi B claiming to be using Teami Blends to snap back after having her pregnancy. According to CNN, “Cardi B would like for her 30 million Instagram followers to believe she’s able to do that thanks in part to Teami”. Teami Blends gives them a discount code to promote so that they could encourage their followers to purchase their products and save money while doing it. What their followers don’t know is it isn’t the best product to be using for weight loss because it doesn’t really work and can also have terrible side effects that can hurt more than help others. According to the CNN article, nutritionist Lisa Drayer, “If you take a really close look at it, these teas are just a bunch of herbs”.  Lisa Drayer also stated that if consumers are in taking large amounts, it could cause issues for those with high blood pressure or any heart issues. Another negative side effect claimed by Dr. Dina Halegoua-De Marzio, “Garcinia cambogia and valerian root, which are ingredients in many of these weight-loss products, have been associated with drug-induced liver injury and in some cases of liver failure”. Imagine how many young teens are unaware of these harmful products all because a celebrity or influencer is encouraging them to purchase these products. This is just one of the many ways that social media giants can gain control of the populace and almost bend them at their will. People like to be great and that can make a lot of people want certain things that is out of their reach.

 Twelve or so years back when the internet was simply starting to pick up a toehold in our way of life, groundbreaking organizations built up their online nearness in our current reality where they had a high level of power over their message. Intelligence and discussions were constrained to putting an email interface or a contact structure on your site; remarks frameworks, input, and surveys were almost nonexistent, and “becoming famous online” implied messages with headlines like “Fwd: fwd: fwd: fwd: fwd: You need to see this!” Early gatherings and BBS were utilized by just a minor portion of the web associated populace and web crawlers were moderate and wasteful, so there was next to no obstruction in business-to-purchaser correspondences.

 MetaFilter was likely the principal genuine internet-based life website, yet with the little statistic of complex early adopters, getting a showcasing message on the webpage was about outlandish. There was a low resistance for a limited time movement, and the network would mercilessly pursue any appearance of business aim. This is still valid on numerous carefully internet-based life locales; the substance must breeze through a genuinely stringent trial of ‘intriguing quality’ so as to ascend to the top. Online networking advertising happens in an equitable situation that has moved the control over a decade ago from the organization to the individual, and brilliant organizations have adjusted to this model and figured out how to exploit the framework without depending a lot on ‘gaming the framework’ which frequently has exceptionally negative outcomes. To succeed in the web-based life universe, a brand must discover approaches to offer an incentive alongside their message so as to pick up the number of up-votes, likes, or offers it takes to ascend to the top.

 The effect of online life on families has been examined to perceive what negative and constructive outcomes are going on. Therapists are progressively worried that innovation is separating family correspondence. It can deny groups of consideration, correspondence, and sentiment of wellbeing inside the nuclear family. A book by Sherry Turkle, Alone Together, discusses an examination led where guardians and youngsters were gotten some information about the innovation (Turkle). The outcomes were staggering. Numerous youngsters announced that they felt their folks were dependent on their telephone or PC. Youngsters expressed a longing for their folks to invest quality energy and collaborate with them. This examination demonstrates the requirement for family social cooperation and the lines are obscured on when is sufficient with internet-based life use. Then again, innovation can be utilized to keep families associated. It can enable individuals to monitor calendars, area, and a feeling that all is well with the world between individuals that guardians and additionally kids can become too quickly if necessary. Innovation is likewise useful for groups of separation or division through increasingly prompt voice or face contact. In a recent report distributed by Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project announced, “phones, email, and messaging helped families make up for the expanded worry of present-day life by enabling them to speak with relatives when separated,” (Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech). The effect of internet life is an amazing one. Frequently innovation can deliver negative collaboration, or zero cooperation between kin, couples, or parent-youngster. It keeps the family from learning and displaying with one other meaningful gesture, relational relationship abilities, relational abilities, and holding. As people, we are social commonly and hunger for holding inside connections. We may feel that we are associated through online networking, yet it strips us of our capacity to hear and see verbal and nonverbal messages. Studies have appeared as guardian’s increment screen time do as well, youngsters. Screen time in these examinations included advanced cells, TV, PCs and computer games. Kids emulate what they are instructed, and when guardians use hardware while sitting at a play area with their youngsters, the kids were found to more probable participate in hazardous practices. In another family effect of internet-based life examines, it was discovered that when a parent arrived home from work and their youngsters were drenched in innovation that the parent was welcomed 30% of the time and was overlooked half of the time. What’s more, when kids who invested a lot of energy in interpersonal organization destinations expressed, they felt less upheld by their folks.

 Technology is great and is very empowering to many but it can also be very bad for us in the long term if not dealt with properly. From my own experience walking to class and from going on daily walks to the store or anywhere else, everyone is glued to their phones. As people we lose a valuable experience amongst each other. To interact with one another is something great, it can create memories for us all and technology can get in the way sometimes. One of the biggest concerns with technology is security. As security becomes better every day, so do hackers and with that can be many lives in danger of identity theft and fraud. According to Time magazine, there’s a summit of political leaders that discuss disasters or events in their countries. Time Magazine has recorded one of their concerns having said, “Technology has also created a whole new set of global security concerns. The thoroughly modern phenomenon of cybercrime and economic espionage is estimated to cost the world more than $445 billion every year.” With the increase of crime and fraud. Social media and technology can be a threat to the civilization if not handled on a global and individual level properly. With that there’s needs to be more security and maybe things weren’t meant to be easier as that comes with higher risks.

 Social media and technology as we know it are getting better and better but with that it comes at a cost of gullibility, vulnerability, and ignorance of the unknown. The steps to take these precautions are unknown around the world and that is why it is up to the individual and big companies to take wise steps into the technology world. S being dependent on it can bring catastrophe to many without them knowing it is affecting them in the short term and long term. Celebrities, Companies, Individuals, and Technology are all so grand and in its final form can be made great or can be deadly to those who don’t tread the cyber world carefully.

Works Cited

• Bremmer, Ian. “These 5 Facts Explain How Technology Is Shaping Our World.” Time, Time, 20 Jan. 2016, time.com/4187146/davos-2016-technology-facts/. Accessed 23 May 2019.‌ This Article was used to determine that not just regular people who have daily jobs notice the effect of technology but political and powerful leaders as well. The article talks about a summit a how leaders get together to discuss issues that everyone is having on a natural and technology scale.
• Ehmke, Rachel. “How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers.” Child Mind Institute, Child Mind Institute, 2 Mar. 2016, childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/.
• ‌Fastenau, Jelle. “Under the Influence: The Power of Social Media Influencers.” Medium, Crobox, 6 Mar. 2018, medium.com/crobox/under-the-influence-the-power-of-social-media-influencers-5192571083c3.
• “Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 2019, www.pewinternet.org/. Accessed 23 May 2019. The Pew Research Center take pride in their work and take upon themselves to do research on notably the best topics around. In this topic they talk about the good and bad effects of technology and how it can change people for the better and the good.
• RSPH. “#StatusofMind.” Rsph.Org.Uk, 2019, www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/status-of-mind.html.
• ‌Tinker, Ben. “Can ‘Detox Teas’ like Teami Help You Lose Weight?” CNN, 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/08/14/health/detox-tea-explainer/index.html. Accessed 23 May 2019. This article is helpful in teaching people that not everything on the internet is supposed to be good and that even though celebrities name a product is good, it is ultimately up for the individual to try out that product for themselves. Many have been subject to wrongful advertisement and this is just one of the many products that passed through people’s mind when selecting one.
• ‌Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York, Basic Books, 2017.