Problematic use of social media: the phenomenon of popularity, consequences and risk factors

Social media has revolutionized the way people communicate with each other, the whole world is now available on the screen of a smartphone. People who seemed too distant until yesterday are now available in seconds via a network connection. Smartphone and social media overcome the limitations of remoteness by introducing relationships between people into a completely different dimension. They were supposed to serve mainly as facilitating communication with loved ones, but with time they started to create the surrounding reality. The aim of the article is to present the issues related to the problematic use of social media. The most popular social network sites (SNS) will be presented first, along with their functions, number of users and the reasons why people use them so often. Then, issues related to problematic use of social media will be presented, such as: symptoms, questionnaire methods and consequences. Finally, the author discusses the risk factors of excessive of social media.