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.

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.

In this article, Malcolm Gladwell argues that in a network were loose ties are prevalent and Hierarchy is just a word, social media could never give what social change will ask for. He starts off by recalling the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, were groups of dedicated individuals challenged the status quo, with crucially, strategic activism that led to a true revolution. Mr. Gladwell illustrates that there are a few distinctions that show between traditional activism and social media. One being that social media is not a hierarchy, instead it is a network. Secondly, his more compelling argument that social media is built on “Weak –ties” which rarely will lead to the high-risk activism that is needed.

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 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.

Since the 1990s, the internet has been gaining momentum, growing in popularity and relevance in today’s society. As a result, social media has been on the rise for communication, news, and entertainment, appealing to a wide range of ages and demographics. However, this increased use has also increased challenges to privacy, policy making, and ethics within the government. More recently, the Supreme Court addressed the relationship and challenges between the First Amendment and social media in 2015, ruling that it is difficult to accurately evaluate the intentions of others through social media posts. Social media is creating a new communication revolution in the United States and is generating more effective means to address government issues, but the challenges have demanded policy changes and clarifications of the First Amendment.

As human beings, it is in our nature to surround ourselves with other people. We are constantly trying to broaden the circumference of our circle of friends. One of the most common ways we do this today is through social media, such as Facebook. Facebook is used as a popularity contest, where we add people just too have more friends on the list than our neighbor. However, true friends are not usually acquired on Facebook. According to the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle believes that a real friendship is for its own sake and Facebook friendship concentrate much on amusement and utility.

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.

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

Nowadays people are depending on social media for their daily activities. No matter what the event is social media somehow becomes the topic of discussion. Social media for many businesses can be a great tool, but it’s very important to put some restrictions and procedures in place and be very consistent with enforcement. Most employers and employees are probably not covered by a General Liability policy. The laws that are governing social media continue to change rapidly. Employers must speak with their attorney’s to completely understand the social media liability issues facing their business. The liability facing employers is very important and everyone in the business needs to understand what the governing acts consist of and have clear social media policies in placed in order.

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.

Academic knowledge is simply what we accept as knowledge given to us by educators and scholars from academic institutions. The academic knowledge that people possess and want to know about social media, knowing how to use it and be responsible when accessing social media, impacts and affects us all in some way on both a local and global community level. Erik Qualman (2010) notes that, “Social media touches every facet of our personal and business lives. Social media is living and breathing and it touches every part of an organization from Customer Service to frontline sales, even Human Resources and Information Technology” (p. 1). Social media infects and binds us all in some way and we use to stay close with someone with love from anywhere local to global. We use social media in many ways for academic, personal, or professional purposes. Many academic institutions use it so that their students can easily stay connected outside the classroom being either in a local or global community. Doctors Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson (2011) note that, “Middle and high school students are using social media to connect with one another on homework and group projects. For example, Facebook and similar social media programs allow students to gather outside of class to collaborate and exchange ideas” (p. 801). It is fantastic that schools and their students are utilizing social media to stay connected with their teachers and fellow classmates, but at the same time we

Social Media is an interaction between people where they create, share or an express their ideas and thoughts. It has also been defined as a group of web based applications which help in growing up the technological foundation of the internet. Social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Google plus, BlogSpot, Youtube, Myspace and Wikipedia, and numerous additional technologies which can be considered as social media are changing the way of communication among the people across the globe. Some of the popular content sharing websites like YouTube, face book and Twitter have an option of upload, tag and comment for the users on different categories of content (Photos, Videos or Bookmarks). Human experiencing a vital part of interaction online through expansion of social media. Twitter has been a global communication tool in 2009 "Iranian Presidential Election

Nowadays, Internet and social media plays an important role in our life. You just ask someone such as a child, a teenager, or a old person; you ask a question “Do you know or have facebook?”, and almost people say yes. Following statistic, Facebook has 845 million users at 21st century; Facebook has an appreciable attraction for almost people. Most people have a smartphone in the hand to access social media easily, and it easily helps contact with family, friends, colleagues, and another relatives in anywhere. Additionally, social media includes Facebook, Twitter, or another social facitities that remarkably affect to life of everybody, especially young people. Somebody thinks that social media affects positive aspect to the life of everybody because they think that social media connects a lot people together through social networks, even you do not need face to face each other. The other people think that social media gradually separate in human social interaction, specifically Facebook’s influence. Stephen Marche gave an article with title “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”. I agree with the claim in the article that Facebook also played a part in influencing our lives, but the most important factor that makes us separate from social life is that we are doing it to ourselves.