I have to say that I have been using Facebook for 8 years now. Before, when I was much younger, I would use it mindlessly because I used to add new people every day, I was trying to be online every day and I wanted people to like me and like my silly posts since I wasn’t aware of what I was doing and no one helped me realize because, apparently, they were busy doing the same. Now, when I’m eighteen years old, I’m very conscious of what social media is about and I’ve realized that these platforms are not very useful and at the same time they are (when you can control yourself from being on them all the time)

First, social media is designed to be addictive, so it’s not a surprise that you see many people everywhere scrolling down their social platforms as if real life didn’t exist. To me, it looks like they apart themselves from the world, like they don't want to communicate.

Second, it ruins your self-esteem because it gives you a false sense of what the real world looks like as most people want to upload their best pictures and post their success, but of course that no one’s reality is like that most of the time. This is why other people start to think that their life is boring and other lives are much better and exciting that oneself’s.

Third, it hurts your social skills. In fact, there’s a research which states that kids who grow up using social media show a significant decrease in social skills compared to those who don’t. This is because communicating through social media is much easier than communicating face to face. For instance, on Facebook, you only need to be fluent on your language and understand how to use emojis, whereas to speak face to face with somebody, you need to manage body language, tonality, social signs, etc. which are sort of complicated and require a lot of practice.

I could go on and on talking about the cons of social platforms but I think it wouldn’t be fair because I also believe that it has a good side too.

Instant communication is the best part of it because I am like one click away from talking to my family who is so far away from me, or anyone can plan an upcoming event or a workgroup.

Personally, I can tell I’m not addicted to Facebook, or WhatsApp because I don’t spend much time on them, and about Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and the others I don’t use them because I’m not interested, but I am very, very addicted to YouTube. I love watching videos of everything on youtube, specially TEDtalks and volleyball videos.

Eventually, believe that we have social media handy and we can use them, but we should use them consciously in order to take advantage of them without becoming addicted to them because that is what will screw us over. We need to inform ourselves about how these platforms work and what happens when we use them in a wrong way.