Social Media And Its Impact On Society

As we all know, social media has a tremendous impact on society and has affected in some way our daily life, relationships, and/or business. Every day, people around the world access famous social media network sites such as facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on to find out about other people, others might use social networking to reconnect with old friends, make new friends, or even meet their spouse. The excessive use of social media websites might bring negative effects; while for other people, it might bring satisfaction or positive effects. Technological advancements such as the internet, have given us the opportunity to connect with other people anytime and anywhere in the world. Pretty much all around the world, everyone has access to the World Wide Web via a desktop computer or smart phones. The fact is that no matter our current location or destination we might go, social media will always be following us as long as we have that direct connection. The main focus of this paper is to identify the good and bad of social media, and the current and future problems it will bring.

Social media has affected the public society in both a positive and negative way. It has reduced communication barriers. “The public are able to communicate

While many people put off and ignore the issue of social media and its downfalls, others say that people should think about how our lives are being affected by this advancement in technology, including, lack of human contact and precious time being lost due to consumption with social media. Social media is currently a highly controversial topic in which numerous people have mixed feelings. Society has typically viewed new advancements in technology as beneficial and a sign of success within their country. But, has it solely caused successful outcomes, or are there downfalls to these advancements?

Social media is tool that combines the term social, which refers to the interactions that people have with each other when sharing and receiving information, and the term media, which refers to the instrument of communication. About 12 years ago was when Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace began started this reign of the social media taking over everyone’s lives. It connects us with the other parts of the world. Throughout this generation and the past ones, many have questioned if social media is the best thing around or if it’s doing bad to us. There are always two sides to everything, one always being the correct one, yet with this topic there isn’t, it just depends perspective on how you perceive it.

In 2008 Joel Garreau conducted interviews and wrote a piece titled "Friends Indeed" for the Washington Post. Garreau brings up possible dangers, minor inconveniences, and what truly defines a friend in the new media world we live in. I felt Garreau came across as jaded by most of the interviews he conducted. He did not seem to speak with a wide array of people that gave positive impacts social media can have, but rather focused on the negatives of the subject. Garreau did bring up valid points, however, from personal safety to the aspect of different people in your life seeing your different personalities. For instance your Grandma that you go to church with on Sunday 's is now seeing the pictures of you partying with your friends on Saturday night.

Social media is a controversy topic in today’s society. Some people think that social media destroys human interaction and real life human relationships. While others think that social media is a bless to humanity. Social media makes human interaction much more convenient and much faster than real life human interaction, it makes globalization a reality, it gives a chance for introverted people to express themselves, and it also benefit develop international relationships whether its business or social.

One of the most prominent areas of information technology present in today’s society is that of social media. Facebook users make up 62% of the entire adult population and Twitter users compose 20% of the population (Mobile Messaging and Social Media, 2015). Sites like these allow users to transfer information, in the form of social content, to the Internet community with no limitations. These sites also ease communication across great distances, allowing for a diverse audience for any information posted on such a site. Such a tool for information transfer is incredibly powerful in the hands of those who know how to use it.

Social media provides an outlet that reflects our lives online. It is changing the way we relate to others and how we think about ourselves. Users of social media have created for themselves a social footprint. This footprint marks where they are and where they have been online. Their lifestream is now recorded in the timeline of their social networks. Participants in social media now have a digital identity, which shows their activity with a time and date stamp in reverse chronological order. The users social brand is created by any online interactions that have been created by leaving information (Solomon, 2015).

Since we as a society are currently living in the age known as the Technological Revolution, chances are that in some form or fashion you are aware of and have been exposed to social media. Well, imagine a world where the use of social media became more structured and used to improve education as opposed to just being used for keeping in touch with friends and family, sharing pictures, and seeing how many likes you can get per post. According to the Business Insider Intelligence Report of 2014, social media is now the top Internet activity in the world, Americans’ specifically “spend more time on social media than any other major Internet activity, including email” (Business Insider). Considering this information, it is obvious that social media plays a vital role and impacts the lives of our nation on a daily basis. Some argue that its impact can be negative and a distraction to the educational experience of the younger generation. Regardless of your personal opinion, what if educators were to work with the use of social media for educational purposes. Since it is highly used, it would not only gain the learner’s interest but also would reach more people at large. Therefore, we should learn to better utilize social media in a more constructive educational manner.

When social media first became a popular business tool for networking, building brands, and establishing authority and credibility, many people networked haphazardly. Their approach was akin to throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what would stick. The goal was to connect with as many people as possible with the hope that some of those relationships might be fruitful. Sadly, some people still use social media this way.

Selfie is defined as a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media. Selfie was the 2013 Oxford Dictionaries word of the year and have great impacts on social media websites across the internet. To this day the world has been caught in this tendency by mocking it or participating it. As selfies get more popular the beauty standard are impossible to reach for ordinary young women. Every individual have different perspective of what self-portrait present. In fact, based on my own experience and the experience of classmate, I cannot deny the boost in confidence level that selfies bring. People, who were often unexpressive and distrustful of their own positive trait in the real world, often finds their worth through selfies.

What kind of world could possibly exist without some form of a Facebook, a Twitter, or an Instagram? Perhaps, it would be a world so unjust; people would actually have to call all of their five hundred and twenty-nine best friends by phone. So that they may share with them, the stale bread with one slice of turkey meat sandwich, they bought during lunch! Social media websites like, Facebook or Twitter are portals to information and communication. It has provided new and exciting opportunities for people all around the world to be able to connect with each other more easily than ever before. It has also helped businesses to flourish, and provides just about every answer to a sought out question. The internet superhighway so to speak, has created an excessive need. And as a result, it has become such a craze, that the sophisticated computers used to access the internet, now play a major role in everyone’s life; including children. Many gaming systems, cellular phones, and other electronics readily made available to children all have the potential to easily access the internet. Ever thought about what effects might such a craze have on children? For instance, could the excess of internet use with social media in particular, pose any implications onto children? The excessive partaking in social media amongst children- inhibits their productivity, interferes with the development of their social skills, and desensitizes their outlooks.

that at the very core of social media, is information sharing. We are curious about how

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.

Academic knowledge is simply what we accept as knowledge given to us by educators and scholars from academic institutions. The academic knowledge that people possess and want to know about social media, knowing how to use it and be responsible when accessing social media, impacts and affects us all in some way on both a local and global community level. Erik Qualman (2010) notes that, “Social media touches every facet of our personal and business lives. Social media is living and breathing and it touches every part of an organization from Customer Service to frontline sales, even Human Resources and Information Technology” (p. 1). Social media infects and binds us all in some way and we use to stay close with someone with love from anywhere local to global. We use social media in many ways for academic, personal, or professional purposes. Many academic institutions use it so that their students can easily stay connected outside the classroom being either in a local or global community. Doctors Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson (2011) note that, “Middle and high school students are using social media to connect with one another on homework and group projects. For example, Facebook and similar social media programs allow students to gather outside of class to collaborate and exchange ideas” (p. 801). It is fantastic that schools and their students are utilizing social media to stay connected with their teachers and fellow classmates, but at the same time we