Oversharing Online

Do different social networking sites offer other benefits and drawbacks?

In response to this question, I would have to say yes. As I started to get into all the different apps for social networking I noticed that they had different benefits and drawbacks to me. Facebook has the benefit that it allows me to connect to older family members that live far from me but it has the drawback of needing to have friends. You either have to have friends previous to looking for them on Facebook or make friends on the site. Which did not work best for me since I had only a handful of family members that I wanted to stay in contact with and making online friends has always felt slightly uncomfortable. Instagram I felt was more me when it came to connecting with others on the social network because it allows me to interact with different people without having to start a conversation or connection. I can pass through interesting media about cars, animals, clothes, etc., and not feel the pressure of social interaction. But Instagram also has a drawback in that it does not save posts that you have seen previously.

 

Image from: https://manychat.com/blog/facebook-versus-instagram/

 

Do social networking sites have any responsibility in promoting mental health in their users? If so, how might they go about doing so?

 In my opinion, I believe that it is the social network's responsibility to make mental health a priority and to promote it to all who use their platform given that it can play a big influence on a person's day. If for example, a user sees on a social networking site that bullying another person by saying hurtful words is not truly bullying it may make the person feel that what happened to them is not considered something bad which can result in the person not speaking up about it. This would not promote mental health instead make the person being bullied think it is their fault for feeling hurt. Instead by setting up links, videos, and pictures that had information that promotes good mental health everyone would benefit from them and not have to navigate mental health alone.

Here is a study done by the National Library of Medicine that goes over the positive effects of promoting mental health on social networking sites: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7325786/