Social media is actually making us more emotionally disconnected. Consistently consuming soundbites of people’s lives leads us to piece together a particular idea of reality — one that is far from the truth. We develop such anxiety surrounding social media (and whether or not we’re really living up to the standards expected of us) that we begin to prioritize screen time over real-life face time. As beings who require human intimacy (romantic and not) to survive, it’s becoming a more and more detrimental force in our culture.

What we know at this point,” Shakya told NPR, “is that we have evidence that replacing your real-world relationships with social media use is detrimental to your well-being.

Really, I think people should focus on themselves, instead of concentrating on what others are doing on social media. If one is influenced by what one sees on social media, one would realise that life is not always as beautiful as portrayed in pictures and videos.

One of the problems with social networks is that it is getting harder and harder for others to complain about you behind your back.

Social media is already dangerous to our mental health

Social media era is stirring a lot of things. It is not everything one sees on it that is true, so don’t make people your prayer points. You don’t know what that person is going through (in real life). Why don’t you create your own happiness? Also, don’t ask God for what you cannot handle. Not every billionaire is happy. I weep when I see a lot of things going on online. The morals that we grew up with are all gone. We need to get back to the drawing board. Social media is turning people into what they are not because they want to ‘feel among’, even if they don’t have the capacity.

The problem I had when I wrote The Social Network was that this thing that’s supposed to bring us closer together is pushing us further apart. It gives everyone the impression that everyone else in the world is having a better time, and that if you are not cataloging your life, then you’re not really living it. People are going to show you only pictures of themselves having a great time at the best party with the coolest people eating, for some reason, avocado toast. They’re also not going to experience empathy. When we’re a little kid on a playground and say something mean to another little kid, we see in their face what we did, and we feel bad because of it. On social media, it’s more like yelling at another driver from your car. People are developing a chemical addiction to their phones. A gambling addict feels that rush of dopamine and serotonin not when they win but when the roulette wheel is spinning. When kids stick their hand in their pocket to get their phone and see if someone has commented on the photo they posted, they get that rush of serotonin and dopamine. It’s a big deal. And now, when we talk about our concerns with Facebook, we’re talking about the power that it has to disseminate misinformation and disinformation. We’re never going to put this genie back in the bottle, but surely we can decide that lies are bad.

There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.

Some people are frustrated on social media. If they don’t say negative things about you, they won’t get well. I just block such people; I don’t have time to entertain them.

Life is not how people see it in movies or on social media. When one’s life is centred around social media, one may start to think that one has a problem. However, it shouldn’t be a do-or-die affair. One can aspire to be more than what one sees. Some people’s lives have been messed up because of social media. They have no understanding of reality again. They believe that living a fake life is is the real thing. They just follow people blindly, not knowing that nobody’s life is perfect.

Social media is articulately designed to subconsciously manipulate people’s identity, their desires, and their behaviors

you are not at war against social media - you are at war against yourself

To be clear, conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. If you adopt this philosophy, you’ll almost certainly reduce the number of people with whom you have an active relationship. Real conversation takes time, and the total number of people for which you can uphold this standard will be significantly less than the total number of people you can follow, retweet, “like,” and occasionally leave a comment for on social media, or ping with the occasional text. Once you no longer count the latter activities as meaningful interaction, your social circle will seem at first to contract.

Perhaps social media is better thought of as status media.