Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media for Society

Social media has become the revolution of our century. In reality, social media cannot be ignored. But are social networking sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube a good thing or a bad thing?

Pros and Cons of Social Media for Society

Communication and Connectivity

Social media gives us the opportunity to communicate with our friends and family. You can stay in touch wherever you are. Friends who you haven't seen since school, and who have moved away, will be able to know about your latest happenings just as quickly as your neighbors. We can contact anyone around the world, at any time, within just a few moments. Unlike calling your family across the world, social media is free. Skyping with your friends or family in America doesn't cost a thing, however calling them can cost up to 1.78 Euros per minute (Smith, 2020). We can share the best elements of our life through posting photos of ourselves and our friends. Social media makes us more interwoven in each other's lives.

Business and Advertising

Businesses have noticed the value of social networks in our lives, and they are using different techniques to promote their products. Many companies use social media for their awareness campaigns. They can use it to spread their ideas, knowledge, and information about their products. Right now, Instagram and Snapchat are very popular for advertising, as a diverse age range uses these apps to communicate. YouTube is also very popular when it comes to advertising. How often has it happened to you that you wanted to watch a video on YouTube but you first had to watch a 2-minute advertisement? It is practically impossible to go online and not see any advertisements. Without even noticing it, we come across tons of advertisements every day. And through these advertisements, we can find out everything about the latest products such as new clothes, CDs, games, and mobile phones (Jones, 2019).

Information and Education

Social media is a big source of information. Nowadays we can find everything, literally everything, on the internet and social media. This is because people want to share their knowledge and findings via social media. For example, on Wikipedia, everything you need to know can be found on this international social media website. For students (like me), this is very convenient. They can use the information on the internet for their own schoolwork, or just for inspiration. For businesses, this source of information is also quite useful. They can gain more knowledge on how to improve their business and compare themselves with other companies using the media as secondary evidence. In this way, there will always be competition between companies, and they will keep growing if they manage to keep improving their products.

Negative Impacts

Unfortunately, not all consequences of this technology are good ones. For example, the way it allows us to hide ourselves behind a screen and limit or even avoid social interaction face to face. Because of social media, we don’t have to put any work into building an actual relationship. The only thing we have to do is click on a button, and you can be friends with anybody. Just think of the people on your friend list on Facebook. How many of them do you actually speak to on a regular basis? In addition to this, social media can also have a very negative effect on our body image. Society communicates messages to us on what the 'ideal' or 'perfect' body should look like. Within the media and advertising industries, images of models and celebrities are chosen to reflect today's body 'ideals' (Brown, 2021).

Conclusion

Having considered some advantages and disadvantages of social media, I think it is a good thing for society. There are many good things about social media, such as the way it allows us to communicate with everyone around the world, the way it can be used for marketing, and also all the information we can find on it is a great advantage. However, there are also some bad things about it, such as the fact that it limits our level of human interaction. For the business world, social media is definitely a good thing, but whether it is a good or bad thing for yourself, that depends completely on your own behavior. If you can keep your real life separated from your internet life and use social networking as a small part of it, everything will just be fine.

References

• Brown, A. (2021). The impact of social media on body image. Journal of Media Psychology, 12(3), 45-59.
• Jones, L. (2019). The role of social media in modern advertising. Marketing Insights, 8(2), 33-47.
• Smith, J. (2020). The cost of communication: Comparing social media and traditional calls. Telecommunications Review, 15(1), 22-30.