Newstory Reflection

How Social Media Can Induce Feelings of ‘Missing Out’

People today are deeply influenced by the technology. While the technology becomes more common, our relationship with technology is getting closer. As the social networking become more popular, especially among teenagers, visiting those social network sites become a part of their daily lives. It helps people to maintain their friendship. They can communicate with friends easier. Their relationships are connected by the social media.

Since a lot of portable instruments like mobile phones and notebooks provide channels to access to those social network sites, it is convenient for people to update their statuses and share the information easily. It reinforces them to participate in the sites frequently. Updating the news, people’s private lives are publicized. They are likely to show where they are or what they are doing at that period of time. All of their traces would be marked.

Nevertheless, people seem cannot leave the sites for a little while because they are afraid that they would be missing out by their friends. As people always take photos and post them on social network sites to let others know who they are hanging out with and where they are. It would generate a kind of anxiety of being neglected if their friends hanging out without you. Therefore, people may keep on checking the recent news of their friend. They cannot extricate themselves out of the social media.

Moreover, although people have the autonomy to visit the social network site, it seems they are being controlled by the technology at a certain level. The cyberspace creates an invisible gravitation and people have bogged down inextricably. They would feel ill at ease if they do not log in the social network sites. The notifications always remind the existence of social network sites. People would not actually get away with them.

It can be noticed the relationship between people and technology become very intimate nowadays. The role of technology seems to be more essential and it no longer is merely an object. It is able to influence an individual's emotion.

By Annie Cheng