Essay

What's up?
( Why aren't you online?) 1













What's up?
( Why aren't you online?)











Soraya Moreno García















Valencia University, English for Business (Essay).
Dr.Elena Bosch
November 25, 2011





What's up? .
( Why aren't you online?) 2


What's up?
(Why aren't you online?)


Over thepast 10 years, the technologies have increased their influence in our life, along with them, the internet is one of the most important tools that have revolutionized the way we are connected. But internet is not only a technological tool, but it is also a kind of communication, in which we can found different social networks like the old ones, messenger, myspace; or the current ones like Tuenti,Twitter and Facebook. Nowadays, all the people have profile in different social networks, and the person who doesn’t have profile is like nobody. Although the social networks are an impressive tool, they can become an obsession for people or even a disease; actually the make lonelier people, i.e, forgetting face-to face relationship and starting to live a second life, a virtual and cold one.
Thepurpose of this essay is to identify the way how internet and their tools such as social networks can become a disease. That's why we will answer the following questions:

How much influence have the social networks in our lives and what are the reasons that social networks can become an addiction?
What are the negative consequences of their influence?
But do social networks become always anobsession?
So, can the social networks influence us negatively, causing psychological disorders ?

This review of the influence of social networks focuses on these four questions.

How much influence have the social networks in our lives and what are the reasons that social networks can become an addiction?

Nowadays, the level of influence of social networks in our life has reached thelimit: we have arrived at a point in which we go at least 30 times a day into our profile; the reasons people give are different, depending on the people you ask.Someone would tell you that is only for checking it, another one may answer you that is really important for his or her life. This gets to the point that sometimes it becomes more important surfing that having a great time with the family. Itthis continue in this way, many experts say that all that was known before the twentieth century, it will be replaced by the virtual world. And in this new era, people will fall in more diseases, we have more depression and we will be more individualistic and lonelier.

In an important study by Henry Echeburúa, professor of clinical psychology at the University of the Basque Country he said:"an adult abused Internet when connected more than three hours a day, in the teens this limit is two hours, if there is also sleep deprivation (less than 5 hours) and prefer sailing than having other relationships, we may assume that a person is at risk for addiction." He shows in his studies that many people today show these symptoms.

Social networks can became an obsession which is difficult toleave and they need help to give up this addiction. Nowadays, it is believed that new technologies allow with a single click, one person can create quickly false identities or give a self-image that does not correspond with reality. In fact, this creates an emotional tension that promotes addiction. The addiction reaches the point that there are people who take their obsession to the extreme,even fearing for the life of someone when it's more than 2 seconds has not commented on any of their profiles. As we can see in this image:

What's up? .
( Why aren't you online?) 3

In addition, we need to know that the reasons of Internet addiction are different. Internet addiction usually affects people psychologically and the most vulnerable are young people. We have...