Be Careful About What You Post Online - Essay Sample

Introduction

The internet has given rise to online spaces like websites, blogs, and social media sites that enable users to post content, interact with other users in real-time, and get equally influenced by marketing brands on social media pages (Hudson et al. 27-41). While some posts positively appeal to user interaction, other posts harm user interaction and negatively impact the online users (Wagner, Bacarella, and Voigt 606-616). For instance, a user message like "I nearly killed myself laughing" portrays potentially suicidal thoughts, and the user could get viewed as a threat to society.

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Social Media Use

The authors herein conducted a study to assess depressed adolescents' negative and positive social media use. The study used the qualitative method to evaluate the relationship between social media use and psychological distress among 23 adolescents comprised of 5 male and 18 female subjects. Social media's positive use included searching for positive content like humor, seeking social connection, content creation, and entertainment. Social media's cynical use had the making of self-denigrating comparisons with other users, cyberbullying, posting harmful content, and displaying risky behaviors online.

This study is relevant to the research question providing the answer to how online content and social-media posts negatively impact the users. For example, in this study, some adolescents expressed fear and regret due to their own dumb decision of sharing online risky behaviors that included attention-seeking posts of inappropriate clothing, suggestive pictures of sneaking, drinking, smoking, and fighting. However, some adolescents described that their use of social media changed from harmful social media use to optimistic use of social media as they grew older to late adolescence.

Communicate Eating Disorders

Branley and Covey researched how individuals communicate eating disorders on 2 of the most famous social media platforms; Tumblr and Twitter. The study included one hundred and ninety social media posts that got sampled, and the results presented as themes to offer three distinct post types; pro-recovery, anti-ana, and pro-ana. Pro-ana posts denote the content used to describe a desire by users to engage in eating disorder (ED) behaviors. For the pro-ana theme, eating disorders on social media posts led to adverse health outcomes; signs of hunger were portrayed as a lifestyle where some even shared motivational material.

The results of the study inform the research question. To be specific, the pro-ana posts had the effect of triggering disorder eating habits among individuals who posted pro-ana content and already had an ED. The ED posts also encouraged other vulnerable users to search for pro-ana content intentionally. The researchers concluded that future interventions should include targeting the harmful pro-ana social media content to reduce the detrimental impact caused to users.

Use of Social Media

In this online article, Doyle highlights the use of social media and online websites. Positive use of social media results in benefits like the user boosting the career profile, powering up online searching for job opportunities, and connecting with employers. On the other hand, the harmful use of social media harms the users' reputation and results in some employees got fired.

This study is relevant to the identified research question since posting comments about the boss or sharing information about job offers before seeking advice from the boss could get an individual in trouble and could even cost them to get terminated from the current job position. Many organizations have a policy of employment at will, which allows for employee termination at any time without any reason. Therefore, individuals should think before they post, and even if the company does not explicitly prohibit posting, employees should avoid posting details about their daily job routines.

Careless Online Content Posting

The Seacoastonline online site contains illustrations of how careless online content posting can come back to haunt the users. Rio Tilton, a 19-year-old running for a state representative post, found it hard when his past mischievous social media posts were scrutinized to discredit him. Justine Sacco was fired from his current job position of Communications Director of InterActive Corp when he tweeted a racially biased comment on his upcoming trip to Africa, stating that he hoped not to get AIDS during his stay in Africa.

The several aforementioned negative consequences of carelessly sharing information online inform the research question and affirm that users' online content can negatively impact the users. It is a good thing that the online site provides several tips to users on how to interact across social media platforms positively; users should make their social media profiles private to reduce exploitation from strangers, and users should avoid adding new friends that they do not know personally.

Conclusion

The research evaluates social media and the posting of online content to determine whether the users' online content and social-media posts negatively impact the users. Before completing this research, I was aware that frequently engaging on social media platforms leads to social media addiction, which results in wastage of time. One example is how students who continually engage in posting content on social media pages while in class results in distraction during learning. After the research, as evident from the prior mentioned sources, I have learned how sharing negative content online increases psychological stress. For instance, while the users share negative and suggestive content during fun drinking moments, the same individuals later feel embarrassed about the content they share. Careless online content posting can come back to haunt the users as employees would filter out candidates that have negative and risk-taking comments on their social media pages.

Other social media users post personal images, location information and videos on social media sites, which bites them back since such carelessness encourages strangers to use the information to impersonate social media users. One research established that after individuals being affected emotionally and mentally due to negative use of social media in the early adolescent stages, the older adolescents learned to embrace appropriate change and refrain from risky online behavior, which was a good outcome. While the research does not dispute that some positive impacts arise from use of online content that include seeking social connection and getting current information, there is rich evidence of how users' content can negatively impact the users.

Works Cited

Branley, Dawn B., and Judith Covey. "Pro-Ana Versus Pro-Recovery: A Content Analytic Comparison of Social Media Users' Communication about Eating Disorders on Twitter and Tumblr.".