Social Media Essay: The Impact of Social Media on Real Life

Does Social Media Fame Impact a Person’s Life?

Introduction

Social media, which represents the phenomenon of the modern era, has been proven to have a major influence on a person’s way of life. Be that as it may, one of the main functions of social media alongside communication is making the private become public. People share events from their lives and personal photos; in other words, they become connected to others through sharing stories and images.

By considering the matter of ratings of social media that in fact are reflected in the phenomenon of “likes” and “comments,” a person who sometimes has more “likes” and “comments” than other people accordingly becomes famous on social media. Apparently, fame on social media has a considerable influence on how a person perceives their status in real life as well.

The matter of fame in social media

The matter of fame has been proven to have an effect on people’s lives since the existence of civil society. Usually, fame comes from many areas of one’s life, such as politics, social activity, public life in general, and the entertainment industry. It has become to be so that the entertainment industry is the one which provides the most considerable amount of people with fame. Other areas do also claim of making people famous, but what is more important is that in order to be famous a person must be public (Replogle). Fame influences the public status of a person, or in other words, the way other people perceive the person who is considered famous (Brim). Public perception, in turn, influences self-perception of a person and raises a person’s social status in the eyes of others, and in the eyes of that person as well.

The effect on socializing

By being called “social,” the media have a noticeable effect on socializing. However, the real-life image comes to be entirely different. The impact of social media has also proven to depersonalize people in real life, and make them more estranged and alienated from one another. Be that as it may, social media and real-life events are connected because people post things on social media that in fact occur in their lives. Nonetheless, the reality reflected on the screens of cell phones is the reality that comes to be distorted by the very same screen. This way, when a person who becomes famous on social media also happens to be arrogant because of it, it comes to be evident that fame and arrogance at the same time are fake, while also being built on false representation and perception. For this reason, one must claim that fame in social media does not always mean fame in real life. Moreover, fame in real life, even though it becomes fame on social media, always comes first, and this could not be considered as the one that influences a person’s life in the first place.

All in all, it must be said that fame on social media influences a person’s life significantly by changing the status in real life as well. Still, the fame on social media appears to be fake for most of the time, as it is perfected and distributed as the most efficient possible scenarios of reality. The second kind of fame that comes from real life, and is reflected in social media, could not be considered as fame on social media, which influences a person’s life.

Works Cited

Brim, Orville Gilbert. Look at Me!: The Fame Motive from Childhood to Death. University of Michigan Press, 2019, pp. 22-33. Accessed 17 Feb 2019.
Replogle, Elaine. “Fame, Social Media Use, and Ethics.” Sociological Forum, vol 29, no. 3, 2014, pp. 736-742. Wiley, doi:10.1111/socf.12112.