Social Media And Its Effect On Society

Addiction, profit and influence usually are not the first words you would expect to come to mind when thinking about the term “social media,” yet with a little digging you will soon realize it could be the perfect description. Social media can be defined as forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages and other content. Most often social media is understood as a positive concept because of the ways it has allowed us to attain cheap and easily accessible knowledge at the end of our fingertips. For example, take the average college student who would rather spend their last $20 at the bar you can conclude that there are superior consequences to abusing too much of a good thing; using social media has its own set of superior consequences.

Though the importance and dependence of social media in society this meaning has been developed. The third principle of symbolic interactionism is that “meanings can change or be modified through interaction” (Ferris and Stein, 2014, pg. 32). This principle proves that social media does not have to be a negative influence is the dependence and meaning of it in society changed. If society, particularly younger generations, did not place such a heavy importance on social media it would not have the meaning that it does in our society. If social media did not have the importance in society that it does it would not have the power to negatively affect the mental well-being of so many individuals.

Social media and media is used worldwide for multiple purposes, but it can create a toxic environment for many of the young people who use it. Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, but our society has a tendency of setting specific beauty standards. Beauty standards are not only set in the United States, but all over the world. Television shows and magazines, such as Cosmopolitan set certain standards for young women around the world. Media platforms set nearly unattainable goals for young people, more commonly girls. These so called goals lead to multiple issues, such as medical disorders and reinforce gender roles, although, some will argue that media platforms are good because they allow us to connect to each other, many of

Strangely, being on social media for several hours daily is regarded as normal. Although social media use would be classified as a mainstream activity, that does not make common behavior the correct behavior. “Behaviors[sic] such as attempting to attract more followers about your life.” (Fishwick, 2016). Users today are more willing to participate in activities such as cyberbullying, or activities that could potentially harm others or themselves mentally or physically. Getting praise and compliments from strangers, who couldn’t care any less about another user’s well-being, are more important than their own well-being. Blindly following the masses, social media users do not realize the impact they have on others and even on themselves.

High school is a mosh pit of youths, no longer teenagers, but not yet adults. When hundreds or thousands of them are grouped together under one roof, a breeding ground for both insecurity and narcissism is forged. Forced into a pressure cooker of judgement, harassment, and competition, they seek approval from various sources. Some look to trusted advisers, focusing on academics, sports, and extracurriculars. Others look to their peers, potentially falling into a vicious cycle of drugs, alcohol, partying, and other unhealthy behaviors. Left alone to identify themselves, teens rely on the confirmation of their environment. Whether they live in a small town or an urban city, social media has established a worldwide public platform for the scrutinization of this generation of emerging adults. During these tumultuous years, teenagers find themselves seeking the approval of others. While healthy sources of validification exist, the effects of unhealthy, attention-seeking actions are more damaging and longer lasting.

Social media can be both an extremely positive and extremely negative part of today’s society. In our current day and age, a majority of teenagers use social media apps every single day. Social media allows people to connect with friends and family, allows you to see what is going on in the world, and gives you the ability to express yourself to a large audience. As nice as that may sound, there are also negatives to social media. For example, some people use the power of social media to do harm. For most teenagers body image is extremely important. Even if you’re confident in yourself, nowadays people base their self worth on how many likes their picture gets, or even worse, by comparing themselves to the unrealistic, photoshopped pictures of celebrities that clutter the internet. Over time many people around the globe have recognized this problem and small steps have been taken to create a change; however, more people need to band together to solve this problem on a global level. The longer this problem goes unsolved, the more our youth is affected. I’m sure that everyone has looked in the mirror at least once in their life and pinpointed one specific thing they dislike about their body, and in many cases these people do not like that specific feature because it is not celebrated in the media. Every day that the problem of unrealistic photoshopping in the media is not solved, the number of people affected increases drastically. Celebrities and news outlets should work

In recent years, the world has changed by modern technological developments. People in these days are living real revolution and changes that affect in somehow their life. Social media has contributed to link parts of this wide world to each other, and paved the way for all people exchange views and ideas. In addition, social media sites are considered the most widespread on the Internet because of its characteristics that made it different from other websites. Because of social media, people has become living in small town. They do not need to travel in order to getting informations or news. Social media has created easier way to achieve communication between individuals and groups.Social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , High Five, Tagged and YouTube have allowed people to exchange video clips, photos, share files and perform immediate talks and direct communication and interaction between the audience. Despite of advantages of social media that offer to its users, there are some disadvantages that may overcome those advantages. There are a lot of severe criticisms that social media faced because of its negative impact on individuals, families and society. Steal information, break the personal privacy, wasting a lot of time and isolation from people are some of problems that people have faced because of social media. People have divided into two group toward this issue. Some people think that social media has contributed to make their life better.

Social media plays a monumental part in young adults’ lives. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, people aged 13 to 35 have been constantly discovering new ways to interact with each other through a digital medium. But given the enormity of social media, it can only be expected that its effects are just as great. One of the key areas social media affects in these people is language. Therefore, messaging in social media and other forms of digital communication are expanding American young adults’ vocabulary, their attitude towards language, and the forms in which they communicate.

In pants pockets, in purses or on the hips there is a device that most people do no leave their house without. In this century having a cell phone is almost second nature. While some people still use flip phones, phones that slide, or phones with no internet capability, most of the people in the world have a smart phone. Many of these smartphones come pre-programmed with social media applications. These applications would include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many more. With the click of a button people can access the newest funny videos, see that some cousin recently got engaged, and follow the rich and famous. This is all made possible through social media. Social media wasn’t as big as it is now. It was unknown territory for many

their advertising, only brands who spend large amounts of money get the luxury of advertising on these social networks. With the use of only picture, these sites are limiting the amount of conversation about politics to occur. However, just like Twitter both of these sites appeal to millennial’s as well and can slightly influence the younger generations. If a politician were to use Instagram or Pinterest as a way to advertise for their campaign he or she they may want to think twice and use Facebook or Pinterest instead, due to the lack of conversations that occurs as well as the lack of individuals who tend to not be as influenced by these sites to turnout and vote. Nevertheless as each one of these social media sites have their own benefits and drawback, it would be up to the candidate whether or not, they decide to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. However as the data proves the best social networking site to use would be Facebook a candidate would be able to receive a higher voter turnout overall.

Social media isn’t just for updating people on what you are doing in your life but it can also be used to help generate sales for your business. This can be done on nearly any platform that you’d use for personal purposes. Social media sites have millions of people on them and they could be your next customers if you seek to gain more exposure through social media. Not only can you have your brand out there to create awareness, you can also run campaigns to create sales, build relationships with customers, gain feedback on your products or services, give promotion details, create loyalty programs, tank higher in search engines, and it can minimize your advertising costs (Adweek). Some of the main social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Yelp.

The ideas of Social Media and Social Networking can sometimes overlap or be grouped together by researchers due to the similarities between the two. However, Social Media is still a media which is primarily used to transmit or share information with a broad audience, while social networking is an act of engagement as people with common interests associate together and build relationships through community (Edosomwan, 2011). Social Media can be viewed as a medium to get a conversation to reach a larger audience by utilizing a concept called long tail. Long tail means conversations that can be conveyed in different forums (2011). Social Media does not have the limitations of traditional forms or communication such as meetings, phone calls, or emails. Use of Social Media websites has increased the channels of communication and its effectiveness in the organization (2011). In today’s technology driven society, Social Media has become somewhat of a necessity. Traditional forms of communication or advertisement, while still in use, have gradually become more effective due to the fact that the target audience has become increasingly my technology driven. Early studies that looked at the characteristics of social media users found that the majority of user tended to be highly educated, affluent, young, white men (Coleman, 2013). Such has not been the case in many years. As the internet and technology became increasingly available and more cost efficient to the general

Yawn. Post. Tweet. Share. Repeat. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking up in the morning (Weisberg). What are they reaching for? The desire to stay on top of what others are doing is a major point in society. Social media is commonly defined by the repetitive collaboration of keeping up with modern technology. Social networking has a negative role in society whether those affected realize it or not. But it is not only millennials who affected by this routine, it is all age groups. Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes—according to a UK study (Weisberg). Snap Chat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are the Founding Fathers of the digital campaign. “Human character changed on or about December 2010, when everyone, it seemed, started carrying a smartphone” (Mendelson). With a smartphone in hand, people are constantly refreshing, and clicking away to stay updated with what other people are doing. In a recent study by the research firm eMarketer, Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices (Weisberg). This is not only in America: it is a worldwide phenomenon that needs to be stopped.

The internet is like a brain. It will hold on to memories and will never lose them. What do I mean by that, once you post something online you can never delete it and can be hold against you for along time? Social media is one of the main causes of these type of events. Once you post something It can’t be deleted. This could cause problems in any situations. Most jobs or higher up school do look at your background and surprisingly they look at the actions you do on social media. Some people lose jobs and scholarships because of the one small mistake the posted online or something they did along time ago coming back to haunt them. Most people are safe and don’t tend to do such harmful things when they are online. Most people find that’s the problem with social media but that’s a small stroke that’s not a big picture. The big problem with twitter, Facebook or any other big social media websites is the lack of communication with have with individuals in real life. Twitter for example can update millions of people on what’s going on your life and it’s a easy way to talk to friends but just because you can tweet millions of people from behind a screen doesn’t mean you can communicate with people. Sadly, people use twitter as a way to hide themselves from reality a way to escape. Another way of false communication through social media is Direct messaging or DM for short. Its like texting through your social media so now communication is slipping away with these new improvements

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia are all examples of social media sites. Social media enables users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. With the generations today social media is in everyone’s life. Social Media is what brings today the best trends, news, socialization, and digital marketing. There are so many social media sites that allow the users to share pictures, videos, text messages and more on a daily basis. With advantages and disadvantages it leaves researchers wonder whether or not we need it. Social media in today’s world can have its pros and cons. Pros being helping students being able to contact each other with peers, connecting with family members who don’t live near you, know about