IndexThe history of social mediaThe appeal of social mediaThe impact of social media on the spread of fake newsThe influence of social media in electionsConclusionIt's 2018 and fake news has taken over America. With the help of social media, fake news, exaggerated or unreal news has spread. It is used to make a group or individual look bad. Mainly used in politics, fake news not only damages people's reputations, but also affects how people view the news. Many people don't trust what they see in the news today, and that's a problem. A person watching the news must be able to know what he should trust and what he should not trust. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe History of Social MediaAccording to Benjamin Hale (2015), a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where he earned a bachelor's degree, the first social media site ever created was Six Degrees in 1997. A user could create a profile and add more friends . From this was born the era of blogging and instant messaging. However, social media didn't become popular until the creation of MySpace in 2003. Facebook was also born around that time, but only Harvard students had access to it. Facebook paved the way for all other social media services. Then, around 2010, the world was introduced to Instagram, Twitter, and the rest of the now popular social media applications. The appeal of social mediaRichard Axel (2004), professor of neuroscience at Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner, mentions how the brain represents the external world all ties back to how it represents the chemosensory world. Chemosensory is the response to chemical stimuli, and this plays a crucial role in how social media makes users want more. People who use social media often feel the need to refresh their page or check how many likes they get. According to Rebecca Schneider (2015), a graduate of Penn State University, this urge is the result of a chemical released in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine gives us the need for a reward, so when someone checks their post and sees that they received another one, they feel a sense of satisfaction. This creates an addiction in people, who are hooked to social media sites like Instagram. The impact of social media on the spread of fake news Social media has contributed greatly to the recent increase in fake news. According to Monica Anderson and Andrea Caumont (2014), associate researchers and editors of the Pew Research Center, of the 60% of adults who use Facebook, 30% of them get their daily news from it, while Twitter users come with the mark respectively by 8%. As Alfred Hermida talks about in his chapter on social media and news (2016), humans are social animals, so they will sort, filter and share information and news to create and cultivate relationships. This is fine, as long as their perception of what they are looking at is not altered. According to Gershon Dublon and Joseph Paradiso (2014), doctors of physics and sensory construction, mention how electronic media have basically become an extension of the human nervous system and distort human perception of the world and the information they receive. When an individual's perception of news is altered, he or she may believe what he or she reads and sees in fake news. Roja Bandari, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo A. Huberman (2012), in their proceedings of the Sixth AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media,..