Codependent On Social Medi Good Or Bad?

It is no secret that in today’s society, people are heavily reliant on technology. Whether someone is looking up a recipe on his or her tablet, browsing social media through the various apps offered on his or her smartphone, or simply streaming the daily news on a laptop, there exists this codependency between people and the digital world. Some believe that such relationship with this kind of technology is a cause for concern; they think that aspects of anything digital like texting, social media, and internet usage are detrimental to the society and its individuals. However, being dependent and seizing the many opportunities that digital media offers is not an action that is truly bad. With a constantly advancing and adapting society, some

While browsing through different digital media platforms, people can find real news and they can find fake news, laid out as real. Inevitably, there will always be people looking to capitalize on any media distribution method, which social media is. Likewise, there will also be those who will believe anything they read online, not looking any further into confirming if what they are reading is an internet hoax or not. This, unfortunately, is one of the bad side-effects of wider connection; it also opens the system up to those who would exploit it to push their own agendas. Although the following media platforms are now looking to police this, regrettably, it will likely always play a part in any digital media outlet. Even so, this minute problem can always be resolved with little effort from the user; if a person has time to research information online, he or she has the time to carefully verify that same data. With the accessibility of the internet, one can easily find reputable sources to confirm or dismiss such information found online. Moreover, with today’s developing society, it has almost become common knowledge to not believe everything that is posted via any social media outlet without further research on the topic at hand. Also, this small kink in digital media usage does little to

Stanford University's media psychology researcher Albert Bandura provides in his synthesis that social cognitive theory is “an agentic conceptual framework within which to analyze the determinants and psychosocial mechanisms through which symbolic communication influences human thought, affect and action” (pp.266). Bandura explains that communications systems operate through two pathways: in the direct pathway, they promote changes by informing, enabling, motivating, and guiding participants; in the socially mediated pathway, media influences link participants to social networks and community settings that provide natural incentives and continued personalized guidance, for desired change (Bandura, pp. 285). Furthermore, adolescence is a time in which people hone their social navigation skills (social competence), which arguably involves a number of social cognitive processes as well as cognitive control. One of the most common online activities for adolescents is communicating with others, primarily with individuals known online. Use of social networking sites is associated with greater feelings of peer affiliation, and teens or young adults who use social networking sites report less peer-related loneliness than non-users, suggesting that adolescents who use social networking sites are developing the necessary social skills to have healthy peer relationships. Moreover, a study