In this Mobile Internet Era, WeChat has become an integral part of people's lives, and maybe the last thing before going to bed to do is browse circle of friends(朋友圈), the first thing wake up in the morning is to look through WeChat, even between friends they no longer exchange phone numbers but retain only WeChat ID. WeChat for the people has not only a communication tool, but also a way of life. Especially for young people who are good at accepting new things, playing WeChat has become a convenient and fashionable way of life. With WeChat, you can chat with friends at any time, and can pay attention to any information you need, establish your own circle of friends, concerned about others, and also be other people's attention.

But this paper is not to discuss a variety of great convenience and freshexperience that WeChat brings to people, on the contrary, what I want toconcentrate on are the WeChat’s potential damages to users who indulge in it. The paper will elaborate this APP’s disadvantages from three main perspectives.

Firstly, as far as I am concerned, WeChat does harm to the effectiveness of information transfer and the diversity of information. On the one hand, under the tide of commercialization, news and knowledge is covered with a thick layer of business to some extent. Taking Subscriptions (公众号) on WeChat for example, the volume of reading is the representative of influence and criteria of income. Under such guideline, the generation mechanism of news information has completely changed, and professional analysis and fact confirmation is not important any more. As for Subscriptions’ editors who aim at the pursuit of reading volume, they are able to produce a large number of Web headlines by sitting at home and looking for information on Internet instead of conducting on-the-spot investigations. Some may just reprint from others, creating appalling headlines that cannot bear closer analysis or are glutted with so much Chicken Soup for the Soul. Have Subscriptions on WeChat achieved the effectiveness of the information transfer? I am very skeptical about that.

On the other hand, for so many years, with the rapid development of information technology, we have been crazy with a more open, more diverse information times already created by the Internet, and human being are always enjoys continuously developing new technology platform that can share more information. And you may say that WeChat bring more information for us but it is a paradox in my opinion. It is the WeChat that putting us in a predicament of less information. For example, you can find same information from different Subscriptions. So, is it true that there is an amount of information that is being expanded to us? When all people glance over the same news, or circles of friends skim through the same information, we can help questioning that the amount of information we can obtain is reduced or increased? The field of vision we are concerned about is reduced or expanded? The meaning of a public topic we discuss is more limited or more common?

On WeChat, information cannot meet readers’ specific needs, which is not layered. For example, a college professor and a primary school student may be exposed to same information from Subscriptions. Undoubtedly, when people turn their eyes to the same problem, so many other issues raised by this complicated society may be neglected, and they are also part of our society which may be even more important. As far as I am concerned, there was a time when people read different newspapers, magazines and books based on their own interests, when people exchanged information with a “1+1>2” outcome, expanding the amount of people's knowledge and information, and thus promoting the exchange of desire between people and people. On the contrary, in today's mobile Internet era, when people familiar with each other gather to communicate, they share a number of similar information and knowledge, resulting in the "1+1=1" outcome.

Secondly, WeChat is undermining people’s critical and independent thinking ability. How to form your own judgements in this time, and not to be overwhelmed by the community, is the biggest challenge for the internet citizens.Living in the mobile Internet era, because each person has become a self-media which can be free of external sound, and people have certain common characteristics from different regions of our vast country can easily focus together, resulting in the formation of the Internet community. As a channel and platform for people to connect with each other, the WeChat breeding a lot of group, that is, the WeChat community of people with some common characteristics. And due to the convenience of information flow, people in these communities are very easy to interact with each other and produce a strong public opinion. When you are a member of one community, undoubtedly you will affected by the public opinion. Besides, the circle of friends on WeChat is formed by the mutual connection between acquaintances. Members of WeChat groups do not necessarily know each other, but they have common identity---friends of friends, so we can call the WeChat an acquaintance society, which makes it easier for your independent thinking to be affected by people closed to you. As a successful mobile Internet product, WeChat has been integrated into our life, but fast-food-styled information making people more and more lazily to think, nor have time to think，which cannot help but let us worry about the decline of critical thinking and independent thinking ability.

Thirdly, WeChat can also be harmful to our society such as spreading rumors, sowing sedition broadcast over the country, implementing cheating, andprying into other people's piracy, etc. Just as an old saying goes, ”Technology is a double-edges sword”, in the hand of bad guys, WeChat can be a tool of evil deed, especially thanks to the WeChat’s distinguishing features. As you can see, in the spread process within WeChat community, the rumor is no longer limited to the wise. People will selectively blind, not only losing discrimination to the rumors but also adding fuel to the flames. Even someone knows it is not true, but because of the special relationship of "Friends of friends", which make them turn a blind eye, or be compelled to echo, making rumors more prevailing in WeChat community. After repeated by the circle of friends, most people may choose to believe even it is fake news or false information.

Meanwhile, instinctive and sensitive emotion easily spread in the group, while the rational and calm mood is difficult to make a difference, which is also true in the WeChat group. Although the group is relatively small, but due to therapid speed of news spreading, provocative or even antisocial speech will betransferred quickly, sometimes resulting in social instability in the interests of minorities. In particular, teenagers are more easily to be instigated by others.Besides, though we call WeChat an “acquaintance society”, there are still many strangers on WeChat due to it’s “People Nearby” function, they may spy into your piracy, or using hypothesized account to implement cheating, whose cases could be found easily on Internet. More than that, someone spending too much time on WeChat, and some of them even play it when dressing, eating, chatting. Consequently, it is no wonder that someone said “The furthest distance in the world is that I'm in your side, but you are playing with the WeChat”, mimicking Tagore’s lines. What’s more, I argue that WeChat reduces the activity of interpersonal relationship to some extent. Take me for example, I used to phone with my mom once two days, but when I open a WeChat account for my mom, we communicate by WeChat. In most case, I am distracted by so much fragmented information that I obviously feel that our communication time is not so long asbefore.

All in all, there is no doubt that WeChat does have offered us a more convenient communication platform, but every coin has two sides and WeChat is no exception. We should treat the WeChat with a rational attitude. I do not hope that one day human being has to communicate in a way without humanistic temperature, and I do not want the progress of science and technology finally in exchange for that people is no longer lying on the grass together, talking about their dreams, talking about their lives. I do not want that day to come, but in order to prevent that day, we have to make some changes at the present moment.