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 is a variety of platforms provided to the public as a medium for expression and communication. Seemingly, social media could be viewed as a positive contribution to society, but one must consider the underlying effects of society. Many of us don’t take into account the role that social media plays in the way we perceive things, think, and live our lives. Social media plays a critical part in societal norms. “Social norms are rules of conduct that governs interactions among individuals within a reference group. Norm violations can often provoke disapproval and loss of esteem,” (Young, 2007). People seek approval or validation by their peers or other individuals in society; in effect, societal norms are generally abided by many individuals. “People want to be accepted by others in their social environment and often end up conforming to behaviors that they believe the majority holds as appropriate,”(Power, 2011). Often times societal norms create a strong scrutiny of individuals, which in turn can create poor body image, body dissatisfaction, and more. Poor body image and body dissatisfaction can be the basis for development of an eating disorder. “ The best known contributor to both clinical eating disorders and sub clinical cases of disordered eating is negative body image and high body dissatisfaction,”(NEDA). There are various types of eating disorders; “All feature serious disturbances in eating behaviors and weight regulation,” (Eating Disorders: More Than

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?

Today’s world is influenced by many factors. One of which is technology; many things have been created that have revolutionized society. Social Media is one of the newly invented platforms, which have come out as a result of technology. Social media is used on the web or via applications where users can view, share and learn about what others in their lives, communities and countries are doing. Social media has made communication very effective in today’s day and age and has helped many people in many ways; however, social media also has its downsides. Social media has made our lives less private and has allowed people to be able to find out confidential information about us. This topic is vital because all people using social media, from all different age groups, should be aware of the risks involved within social media because their privacy could be invaded by anyone. Social media can thus be seen as a threat as people can set out to harm you through invasion of your privacy. Social media is bad because it affects or privacy and communication skills.

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 most individuals hear the term social media they instantly think of Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social networks we use today. Social media didn’t start with computers; however, social media dates back as early as 1792 with the telegraph explain Hendricks (2013). Social media started to spike in the early 1950’s when the phone became popular. Between the 50’s and the 90’s, many social media ideas were brought to life but eventually died; Border states most of these focused around a “Bulletin Board System”.

Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research, writes, “If your student ministry is a four-year holding tank with pizza, don’t expect young adults to stick around.” Dr. Stetzer is referring to the current epidemic seen in America involving the church. American churches, and churches around the world, are experiencing a decrease in their attendance. At the current rate, less than ten percent of Americans will attend church, by the year 2050. The largest age group of those leaving the church is Generation Y or, as they are better known, Millennials. The lack of community, authenticity, and faith are contributing factors to the drop of millennials attendance seen in the American church.

Some of our biggest role models in America revolve around our sports leaders. People who have put in many hours of training hard and overcoming seemingly unsurpassable obstacles. People like Lebron James, Usain Bolt, Peyton Manning, etc. Maybe we want to feel the fame, own the money, or meet other amazing people, but we all want to feel the accomplishment in some way or another. Team activities seem to be a major concept our civilization immerses itself in. We are willing to pay hundreds of dollars year after year to go out and cheer on our role-models and follow players’ social media accounts like it is theology we are reading. In ways it is consuming our thinking however, today teams teach many valuable life skills that children lack.

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).

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.

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.

popularity of the internet has brought about social interaction to a level that was never witnessed before. The emergence of social networks has been increasingly popular. Social media network comprises of individuals from varied gender, religious, racial and ethnic affiliations. Primarily, social media networking is meant to foster interaction and sharing of various issues that people encounter in society. Following the functionalist sociological perspective, social media networks are characterized by each individual following another and thus encouraging coaction between individuals through the power of the internet infrastructure.

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

Just as the Internet has changed the lives of individuals in our society, it also revolutionized the way they interact socially. Social media is the collection of online communications websites primarily focused on virtual community interactions, fast and easy content-sharing, and convenient ways for collaboration between people. There are lots of well-known social media web sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, and Blogger. From these online social networking websites, individuals, friends, families, and groups are allowed to create and exchange any type of content and be engage in creating conversations. It is an invaluable tool that helps bridge the distances between them and other people and

Facebook, like most of the internet, is an excellent innovation that has become a part of our daily lives. It presents us with an opportunity to intermingle with a much broader network of people. You can form your own online individuality, while also learning how social media supports the creation of new relationships and communities. For the people who want to be entrepreneurs, it might be an introduction to business as you think of how to “promote yourself. Individuals with particular social identities or interests can connect with others, while someone who is interested in online games, can use to find friends with similar interests.