“social media can pose some dangers to everybody, and as such, should be used with caution”

  Social media debates are not a new concept; as with anything, putting yourself out there in return for open public favor and judgement seems odd – we can see results deterred far from our expectations.

   Using social media can be genuinely helpful in many circumstances, whether it be used for simple communication or to announce major events. However, social media can pose many dangers to everybody, and as such, should be used with caution.

   According to Statista, a statistics service, there are 4.2 billion users internationally who actively participate in social media, with 4.66 billion users actively on the internet. About 2 million snapchat messages are sent in one minute, which is roughly the same amount of time it takes for 5.7 million searches to be completed through Google.

   Think about it: you are putting tangible value on everything you put out there. Having numbers, such as views and likes, measures this value in an apparently linear fashion. It doesn’t really make sense considering that it doesn’t hold value in the first place, unless nearly all 4.2 billion social media users contribute.

   It is overly common to trend-hop to increase popularity value, but it’s as this strengthens it gets harder to get popularity points. In other words, the question “how do we separate people?” will continue to arise.

   In natural response to this, extremely risky trends start. In other words, if you want bigger numbers, you need to do bigger things. In the past, we have seen dangerous challenges such as “devious licks” and “crate walks.” It just continues to worsen.

   As with all dangerous trends, example two has caused immense damage both economically and physically.

   And if it is not risky, it is fake. Selfies do not really have faces; they have unrealistic expectations of our faces. This is not a new idea, and yet subconsciously we continue to worry about how others’ online appearance is above our own.

   The younger generation is not the culprit of this; platforms with statistically higher proportions of older individuals are ones that have more active users. Facebook has 2.9 billion active users, while TikTok and Snapchat have 1 billion and 538 million active users, respectively.

   Social media may one day become a misnomer if it is no longer social, and only media. The tangible numbers we put on trends and filters should serve as a cautious warning to the overextended usage of social platforms. There is not much to say, but there is much to think about.