The bright and dark sides of social media and its countermeasures

Our daily lives increasingly involve social media, and its stars have taken on the role of trend-setters. In many previous studies on the effects of social media, the studies only discuss specific effects of social media but not comparing them to get an overview and its adverse effect’s countermeasures. This study aims to discover and compare social media’s bright and dark sides and countermeasures. We employed a PRISMA-based search protocol (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) recommendation to answer the research questions. We analyzed the 1964 results obtained from WoS and 20 hand-picked from Google Scholar. This study concludes that (1)Followings’ very favorable opinions of a company or product due to social media influencers’ attractiveness would lead to purchase intentions; (2)The younger generation with greater worldliness and higher image management had greater social capital; (3)Social media promotes adverse outcomes by providing a platform for cyberbullying, trolling, and spreading hate; (4)excessive social media use is a significant stressor that contributes to technostress, which can have a severe impact on college students’ educational outcomes; (5)Given how crucial it is to involve young people in preventing possible social media harms, a prohibitionist strategy would be ineffective.; (6)Avoiding the harmful health effects of excessive social media use can be accomplished by using it responsibly.