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.

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?

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.

Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat - all these are called social media and they have a critical impact on the way young people think and interact on a day to day basis. “Virtual Communities” (Lee, 2015) is about the virtual world and how it affects the physical world and the influence it has on the lives of people on a daily basis. “Enhancing Your Body Image” (Donatelle, 2015) is about the influences that media or outside sources have on the way people view their bodies and how people feel about themselves. The main similarity between the two concepts is the influences that virtual communities have on the way people see themselves in the physical world. Enhancing one’s body image and the affects virtual communities have on the physical world are connected in many ways; furthermore, the influences that media has over people and how that can lead into bullying, and how all of it affects the future of an individual.

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”.

Technology has developed into one of the most valuable assets to everyday life. The social media apps developed from technology have opened many doors to allow the impossible possible. Being able to buy things online with the click of a mouse, chatting with a friend who lives across the country, depositing a check through your smart phone, and the possibilities are continuously endless. With more and more incredible innovations happening on a daily basis. Much has been made of the growth of social media and its impact on society. This impact can vastly be seen as a positive through the eyes of the general public, a strong perception driven in part by the social media itself, but as social media in all its forms has grown, an argument can inevitably be made that there has been a corresponding diminishment of personal privacy. Many forget that there is a price attached to having free sharing of personal information.

With today’s advanced technology of the 21st century, we now have a wide range of access to information through social media. We can now stay updated with current topics and events going on around the world and become educated with just a click, or tap, to a social media application. Many people assume that social media are our friend and that social media is a great thing to have. But, what these people fail to realize is that social media is really our enemy, our foe. Where do I stand with social media? Let’s just say I used to be blinded as much as today’s people are, who are corrupted by the vast trends of social media. Though I may use social media myself, I do not consider it my friend. I consider social media a corruption towards society and a foe, not just towards me, but to the rest of the world.

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.

In a few years our generation will be looking back on our youth saying “Social media is one of the biggest leaps made in our culture”. Social media has advanced the way communication is achieved through the way society shares knowledge. We are able to talk to anyone anytime just through a simple text or a Facebook message. We are able to communicate through technology in fast, simple ways knowing what everyone is up too through their never-ending tweets and posts. Though all the things may be true there is a bigger issue at hand, and this is causing great travesty. Social media is destroying communication and intamicy on a face-to-face level.

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).

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.

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.

In today’s society, online networking has been spreading rapidly throughout all generations because of its prominence. Social media are websites or other means of communication utilized by individuals to construct and share information within diverse groups. As these websites are presenting data, it is also interacting with users while providing the information, such as allowing users to comment on a post or to participate in a survey. Conversely, social networking sites are online platforms, which permits users to fabricate an open profile and communicate with others. As the reputation of social networking sites are continuing to develop, the time users spend on these sites increase as well. It is to a point where the websites are accessible on their mobile smartphones where they can browse on a regular basis (Duggan and Smith, 2013). With this being said, users have the ability for quick access, thus prompting individuals to invest long periods of time with social networking sites. Through this capability, it can be perceived how this impact affects the formation of identity and how a large portion of their socialization occurs online as opposed to face-to-face interactions. These connections can be shown through the influence of social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Instagram.

It is clear that in the modern world, social media plays a pivotal role in communication amongst humanity. Social media serves a variety of purposes ranging from personal settings like keeping in touch with friends through Facebook and Twitter, as well as business environments through the use of LinkedIn. It has been proven in many scientific studies that among human’s basic needs is the necessity for a social connection with other human beings. Well, in the 21st century we have seen this need become very easy to attain through the introduction of social media. Social media has enabled humans to communicate in an advanced way just by using their fingertips. Although, social media is generally regarded as a positive device for humanity, it has sparked great controversy in its impact toward generating addictive and anti-social qualities within individuals. Americans should limit the time they spend on social media because it often causes rampant addiction that may result in mental disorders such as anxiety and depression that can lead to poor life decisions prompted by habitual anti-social behaviors.

Most of us have been fiercely defending our personal right to make choices while we ignore the fact that the overall results and outcome only exploit us. For instance, imagine you go out with a friend on a Tuesday night and actually want to let the conversation drag; the youngsters tend to open Yelp and see different bars. This makes them drag the overall situation and without actually having a relevance to the scenario the two friends try to gauge in the attention of others also. This actually has confirmed the fact that balance has to be maintained in order to let the youngsters enjoy the overall advantages of social media (Tristan, 2016)