Social Media 's Influence On Society

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.

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?

Do you have a facebook account? What about Instagram? Whether you’ve dipped your toes in the waters of social media, have you ever wondered about the impacts that it can have on your personal life? In the modern society today, social media plays an important role. It has become a prominent part of a teenager’s life. One of the most difficult questions to answer is whether the role that social media plays is positive or negative. For the past 10 years, the rise of social media is immensely great. Although social media has helped change lives for good, it can lead to negative consequences such as the increase in cyber bullying, how social media affects how teenagers view body image and how social media drives teenagers to distraction.

Social media is changing our lives in the way we communicate with the others and building relationships. So, People around us seem to be distracted, and they do not communicate with others as it was without using the social media. Also, some of them have become introverted due to the social media.

Social media popularity has risen over the past years. The majority of the population of the age, now possesses one or more social accounts. Various articles and news sources have indicated that social media deteriorates person to person interaction and are gateways for cybercrimes to occur. However, behind such negative statements social media does provide a plethora of benefits to society. In fact, social media permits individuals to communicate, provides opportunities for businesses, and educates society.

At the dawn of the millennium, a new social issue began to surface. As the internet rapidly gained international popularity, new branches of it were created. Currently, Social media dominates the internet world. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines social media as, ¨forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)” (www.merriam-webster.com). The sudden rise of social media’s popularity sparked countless debates on how it affects our society. According to statistics, one out of four people in the world today use some type of social media, whether it be instagram, facebook, twitter, or more (Whiteman). Numerous studies were released on how social media is impacting the lives of people worldwide. The overwhelming evidence proves that social media, overall, affects people in a negative way.

It is a fact that social media has existed for several decades. However, as technologies keep advancing, the usages of social media have gained attention because of the issues they may cause. On one hand, social media is fundamentally used to interact among users via the Internet; consequently, they may share and exchange pieces of information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. In summary, social media is basically used to connect people. On the other hand, recent studies have found that rather than making the users feel connected, they can promote loneliness and less social interaction, which may lead to isolation. The scope of this analysis is limited to five sources with the following four themes: loneliness, face-to-face communication, textual technological communication values, and negative emotions.

For many years, the world has heard stories about children and teens who have gone missing or taking their lives because of social media. Some think that social media should be restricted to only allow so much information. Others think that social media is a form of expression that can help teens and businesses grow. By adding restrictions, such as a limit to what information you can share on your profile, the government can help combat prevent identity theft, social media related kidnappings, and reduce cyberbullying even though the opposing side disputes these reasons and stance.

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.

The use of social media in the professional domain has increased exponentially. It’s not only an extremely effective marketing tool, but it’s also cost effective and time saving (Kappel & Spector, 2012). Once social media crossed into the professional realm it was only a matter of time before employers and employees began to face problems regarding its use. Employers are not only using social media to advertise and recruit for their businesses, but they are also using it as a means to terminate their employees. This has raised many questions regarding how much access, if any, employers should have to their employee’s personal social media sites, and how much an employee should reveal about themselves online. This becomes even trickier when social media is used in nursing. The public holds health care workers to a higher standard, which can make nurses who use social media more accountable for what they post and how they display themselves online. Despite the potential drawbacks, many in the nursing profession believe strongly that social media is a positive addition to the nursing world (NCBSN, 2012). However, it is important for nurses to utilize the ethical codes and principles that guide the profession in their daily social media usage.

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.

The amount of users in social media has increased in numbers over the years. The use of social media has been used throughout different industries including collegiate sports. Over the years it has been seen to increase fan support and interactions, increase the numbers in ticket sales and help with recruiting. Social media has even posed as a danger into hurting a brand throughout recent events.

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.

With Social Media having such a presence in today’s society it’s almost impossible to not be involved in some way. Millions of people are using social media as a way to stay engaged with others, while also portraying a picture of their life through pictures, videos, and status updates. Although many might consider sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to be a detriment to our society, I strongly believe that if social networking is used in a constructive manner sites like Facebook can have great benefits on its users such as: empowerment, confidence, and a feeling of being connected.

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)