Use and abuse of social media

Social media refer to the sharing of information and human communication using a mobile, tablet, and computer. Nowadays everyone is using social media for several reasons. People are using social media for various purposes. It can be for business, informative or educational purposes and can also be for fun. The influence of social media on today’s society cannot be neglected. This article aims to explore the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Let’s glance over some advantages which social media have. Social media is a great device for education. People can easily get the required information through social media with just a few clicks. Social media can be used as media among students, teachers, and professionals.

On social media, we can follow anyone in a specific niche to enhance our knowledge. No matter what our educational background is still still still acknowledge without paying. Another key beneficial factor of social media is that people can get the latest news and information and allows us to be aware of the present issues. It also strengthens bonds with our loved ones due to its ability of instant sharing of text, photos, videos, and voice mails so one can feel like he/she is with their loved ones.

Moreover, people seek help from each other by asking someone to help them or offering their services to others. People can showcase their talent via social media and can accomplish something great. Apart from that, it allows the government to figure out issues within the remote area and helps in solving these issues, and also helps agencies to spy and find criminals. Many cases are narrowed down, by researching social media accounts of associated individuals. Social media also helps companies to promote their brand, get new employees, and double their sales. Although social media have advantages it also has many disadvantages. Let’s explore some of these. Broadly speaking social media have more abuses than its uses.

Firstly, it is harmful to any society because of no monitoring of these websites, this issue leads to fake news, misinformation, propaganda, and fabricated stories. All these things aim to get as many likes, views, and shares as possible to reach maximum people. There can be two main motivations behind it. One can be pecuniary and the other one can be ideological. Pecuniary or monetary purposes refer to publishing viral articles to draw a large viewing base to get original site visits causing advertising gains. While the other one is Ideological motivation considers fake news campaigners seeking to promote candidates or opinions which they support. Whether for pecuniary or ideological purposes, fake news is working. It’s seriously harmful because one cannot distinguish between fact and fiction it can cause turmoil in a country for sure.

Secondly, social media is making the young generation unproductive. According to research, Social media makes the brain lazier and less efficient. Nowadays Youth spends most of their useful time on social media by scrolling and chatting. Consequently, it infects their academic performance. The Digital entertainment survey of 2008 in Great Britain mentions about one-third of students under age 15 to 19 allocate less timing for homework and more time on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Besides that, it is like a drug addiction if once you started spending hours on social media you will be automatically addicted to it so at the end of the day you will not be able to spend time without it.

Thirdly, Individual privacy is lost with social media networking websites and is one of the greatest problems faced these days. Social media sites request people to fulfill personal information which allows others to reach them across the globe. Although there are certain privacy settings people are not aware of and do not have enough knowledge about these settings to secure their accounts. Eventually, they pay the price for what they did unintentionally and regret their action.

To conclude with I would say that social media have positive and negative aspects but it’s up to you that how you use it. As we have discussed that it has advantages and disadvantages and it has a tremendous impact on people. People should use it for positive purposes rather than wasting time on it. They should be careful about its over usage because it will cause some problems like stress, eye strain, brain weaknesses, etc. As Brian Tracy in his book ‘Eat that Frog’ says that ‘The purpose of technology is to make your life smoother and easier, not to create complexity, confusion, and stress.

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