Pros and Cons of Social Media

Intro

Social media is a term that describes a person’s ability to affect other people’s social thinking in a community. The endless social media sites, from Facebook to LinkedIn, make it accessible to interact with many people, but, as everything, it has its pros and cons. The more influence a person has the more ability he has on other person’s mind. The impact of social media has made spaces among human beings, they might sit together (physically) but they are not connected to each other (mentally). Social media has influenced us so much that our lives our dependent on them. We cannot survive a minute without internet. Social media is slowly killing activism and replacing it with slacktivism. Social media has positive and negative impact on our lives, here we will discuss some of them.

Advantages of Social Media

There are many advantages of social media. Social media has become very advanced. It has become a source of income for some people. Through social media we are connected with huge number of people at the same time, and at any place. Nowadays everyone is on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat and have easy access to everyone.

The main advantage of social media is connectivity. Social media also has a vast advantage for students and teachers. You can learn anything easily with the access of internet. You can easily get any information without any cost. If you are in any kind of emergency and you need money you can easily send it with the help of cell phone.

The other advantage of social media is that you get updated about the happenings in the world. You get to know about the important happenings around the world. By doing some research you get to know the proper information, which nowadays you cannot get easily through television and newspaper. Social media can also be used for noble causes. People can easily help poor people by collecting donation online.

It is also one of the advantages of the social media that it helps Governments and Security Agencies to spy and catch criminals to fight crime. Social media helps students in their life. They can easily do their assignment, write an essay, and complete their vocabulary and many more.

With advantages there always come disadvantages. Some are discussed below.

Disadvantages of Social Media

There are advantages and disadvantages of everything on a human being. Some disadvantages are cyberbullying, hacking, fraud, scams, security issues, reputation, privacy, health issues etc. Disadvantages can cause deaths. Today’s society is so influenced of social media that they spend their whole day on surfing social media. Personal data can easily be hacked by hackers. Nothing is secured on social media. The minor brain can easily get affected by social media. Social media has influenced our brains. Hackers hack your personal data and then misuses it. The user’s personal data can easily be accessed by the hacker.

We spent most of our time surfing which is the main cause we have lost interest in other things. By using so much of social media most of people face back pains and eyesight comes weak. Excessive time spent on social media has the effect of making people lose their temper quickly, since any distraction from their preferred activity sets off a kind of irritation. Excessive use of social media can cause decrease in face to face communication skills and conveys inauthentic expression of feelings. Excessive use of social media facilitates laziness. Social media causes lack of emotional connection.

Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that does not report much real news with facts. It uses shocking headlines that catch people’s attention to sell more newspapers. Yellow journalism might include exaggerating facts or spreading rumors.

Conclusion

In my opinion it’s upon the users to take advantage of the particular thing or the disadvantage. Social media gives a lot of useful information about good things and also about bad things but it depends upon the user what to opt for. Social media is very useful for students and as well as for teachers. They can easily get educated about anything useful. Everything is easily available in just a click. You can start online business and can earn easily by sitting at home. If you misuse the use of social media, it can cause you serious mental illness and can cause death also. We should always go for the benefits.

References

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2. Abudabbous, N. (2021). Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media and Its Effects on Young Learners. Available at SSRN 4002626. (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4002626)
3. Holmes, W. S. (2011). Crisis communications and social media: Advantages, disadvantages and best practices. (https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=ccisymposium)
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