By Marlyn Rodriguez |Managing Editor|

In the 21st century we are surrounded by the internet and a multitude of ways to interact with the world around us.

One of those ways is through social media, which includes sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many others.

These sites help us stay up to date on information such as news about events taking place all around the world.

Social media also serves to keep us connected with friends and family that we probably wouldn’t connect with otherwise.

However, is using social media helping us as much as we think it is?

Just like using Facebook can help us to keep us in touch, it can also be a hindrance because many become glued to what is going on in the Facebook world and fail to embrace the people and environment around them.

Looking around you find that people are more attentive to their phones than they are in interacting with the people around them.

This is the hindrance caused by social media.

You neglect the people around you and unintentionally send the message that you are not interested or that you have better things to do.This causes problems by creating distance between yourself and your loved and maintaining those personal intimate relationships.

Sometimes people may feel that social media is benefiting them because of the number of friends they gain through social media.

Whether those people are really your friends or not is the next question.

Are they really people who care for you? People who would befriend you outside of social media?

Research shows that engaging in social media,and distancing yourself from the real world is a key factor in a person’s unhappiness.The two concepts are positively correlated.

Always being around social media causes you to to stop hanging out with people as often as you would otherwise. You become connected to hundreds of people on social media but become isolated from the real world.

Being isolated is not a good thing, it’s a disconnection from the world as it pushes out interpersonal relationships.

Social media and being exposed to peoples’ lives can also cause envy among other people and the life they portray.

Commonly people post the positive parts of their lives, making it seem like they are the happiest people in the world with no flaws or concerns.

That is usually not the case. Everyone has positive and negative experiences as well as ups and downs throughout the day.

Who wants to publicize the sad parts of their life?

Becoming envious of people who only expose the best aspects of their lives is something that is completely unintentional and something that happens without our conscious awareness.

Social media isn’t necessarily bad. Social media is good, when it is used for the right reasons.

Those reasons are keeping communication with long distance friends and family that you actually have an interest in communicating with.

It also helps us stay informed about current events and breaking news that used to be harder to obtain before new media became available.

With the pros, there is always cons.

Social media facilitates alienation from loved ones and can have a negative affect on the interpersonal relationships you hold with people who are physically with you.

Being distracted with social media and neglecting family can send the unintentional message that you are uninterested.

Lastly, social media correlates with unhappiness because it causes a person to become alienating and being alienating makes you lonelier and less happy.

It also increases the chances of becoming envious of the people you see and communicate with online.

Now that you’ve heard the benefits and hindrances of social media, does it make you rethink how tethered you are to your devices?