Essay on Pros and Cons of Social Media
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The term social media denotes an interaction amongst individuals, groups within which they exchange, produce and at times share concepts over the Internet and within the virtual communities (Ciaramella, 2016). On the young people, the influence of the social networks is momentous. In the present world, children are brought up delimited by Communication devices, the interactive social schmoozing sites like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter that makes the platform of social media a facet of the vital significance of their life. Social media has become such a prevalent part of the modern society especially for the teens and the kids. In most schools, the use of mobile devices and school phones has been banned during the school days, and even the websites of social media like Facebook and Twitter blocked on the school computers. The essay, therefore, seeks to illustrate the pros and cons of social media.
The effects of the social media are twofold. On the positive perspective, social networking acts as an invaluable tool for the professionals (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). This is achieved through assisting the young professionals with the marketing of their skills and through the seeking of the business opportunities. With this, the young professional can market themselves in a better way, therefore, presenting themselves as experts in their field of expertise. The young professionals can also be reached via the social platform by the professionals within their field in case they are needed to provide any assistance. Social media can also be used professionally through social networking. Professional social networking helps professional solve problems that emanate from their line of work. Through this, one can get a solution in the fastest way possible thereby alleviating any delay and wastage of time. An example of this is the Whatsapp group created by individuals such as engineers, doctors, Scientist, and environmentalist whereby when an individual incurs a difficult query in his line of profession, he/she may opt to post the query so as to receive assistance from his/her fellow colleagues.
To the students, Social media enables them to contact one another easily regarding the school assignments and school projects. With the realization of social media, students can work from the comfort of their homes thereby eliminating the concept of time wastage through traveling. This does provide the student with ample time and surrounding as they can choose to work from where they are best comfortable. Abdelkarim et al. (2016) show that the students who utilize social media participate more and perform better in class. It is the case as these students get to know the current news and the level of technological advancement present in the world through their perusing of the social media. Each and every day, they can learn one more new thing from the social media. The use of social media in pedagogy assist the students who have difficult in the expression of their thoughts within the classrooms to get involved in the learning process. The confidence level of these children is raised as well as their classroom participation. Regarding the doing of homework, the students can get clarification through posting a message though the social media (Chis, & Talpos, 2011). Also, other students can benefit from the teacher feedbacks on the message board regarding the previously asked question from the students as their responses will be displayed where they are visible to everyone.
With the social media usage, teachers can manage to share useful links to the students for their benefit (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). Such links can be of either for educational purposes or for the sake of passing information to their students. Through this, there is minimal wastage of time and the advantage of providing some clarification to some pressing matters. The students, teachers and the parents can be on the same page with the help of social media. Teachers can pass information to the parents of the students through sites like Facebook thereby letting them have the know-how on the progress of their kids. With this, the parents can keep touch with the teachers and their kids in a constant progression. Having frequent contact with the teachers aids the parents in understanding their kids and getting to know what they are undergoing at any time in their life. It also provides them with the advantage of lessening the distance of travel to the schools for the parents to meet their kids teachers and discuss their progress. Frequent interaction with the parents and teachers is paramount to the success of the students. The social media has made this easily realizable.
Through Social Media, Students can share resources quickly whether in classroom or not (Ciaramella, 2016). Students can share important educational resources as in the example of WhatsApp where files can be attached, and even the links to the needed material are shared with easy. Through social media, the students can easily have access to whatever kind of resources regarding a specific subject in which they are researching. Resources of all the disciplines taught in school are found in the social media (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). The disciplines can either be engineering, history, medicine, and commerce. All the resources of such disciplines are on the social media. This aids in the faster learning of the scholars.
To the society, social media has brought about enlightenment (Chis, & Talpos, 2011). Most societies in the world at present have advanced technologically and even in the way of living. People can convey information from one point to another easily within a flick of a second. Through social media, the society has learned to keep up to date with the fashion trends that happen in the different parts of the world. The transmission of information regarding fashion from one place of the globe to another is faster. For the example of Facebook, information on clothes manufactured in different places on earth is posted on the Facebook for the general public to see and even their pictures posted. With this, there is increased information dissemination to the society. Also, the social media disseminates information of the technological advancement that is happening at different places on earth. With this, the society is kept aware of the constant change and advancement in technology.
Through social media, news of occurrences that are happening at different places are passed with easy (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). Information on disasters that have happened in different places on the globe will be passed easily on social media, and the help the fatalities require can be given with ease. There have been cases of airplane, earthquakes and flood calamities. Information on such calamities has been disseminated faster on social media than any other form of communication. With the faster sharing of information regarding the calamities, governments have been able to respond faster, and societies helped to avert the inevitable.
The social media has its cons too. Social media affects the emotional connection. Conversation using media is never better as one cannot be able to establish the emotion of the other party involved (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). This makes one have rhetorical questions as to whether the other person meant what they said or not.An example is when one gets into a fight with a friend, and later the friend apologizes using a text message claiming to be sorry for what happened. It is really difficult to know if she/he is truly sorry since she did not say face to face.
Social media gives people opportunities to hurt others (Norton & Strauss, 2013). Social media has gotten to a point where people write anything they wish without thinking how they are hurting others. Some people lack the courage to tell others hurting words, but they can write a message or an email without care. These writers forget that behind the screen there are real individuals.
Social media brings about reduced face to face communication skills. Computer reliance hurts someones ability to have a better conversation by making it unusual to respond with a spoken word. Instead, we all go to the computer to deliver the message. With this, the mode of physical interaction is reduced, and the fact of not visiting one another is paramount as any message can be delivered with a click of a button through social media (Yaqub, 2014).
In most instances, social media conveys a false expression of feelings (Dolan, 2016). Social network conversations are full of word like LOL and HAHA. These exclamations are meant to represent laughter, and yet the sender is neither laughing not smiling. 0ne is forced to use the expressions to make the receiver feel that the sender is happy yet it is a mere lie. The social media users forget to realize that the Actual laughter makes laughing so good then that idea of making something to be funny.
Frequent use of Social networks also diminishes thoughtfulness and understanding (Abdelkarim et al., 2016). Social networking has reduced the quality and quantity of conversations. People spend a lot of time online making them not to understand the feeling or behavior of the individual they are communicating. Talking to somebody through mail or message, one cannot understand them fully. Social media has ruined that thoughtfulness of basically saying how are you in person. An example is one could be very thoughtful to write a letter to a friend who is in London than chatting online in seconds.
Laziness can be caused by social media (Yaqub, 2014). Social media facilitates laziness in that, instead of visiting friends one can only write a message to them within few seconds. Some colleagues find it so hard to go to the next department to deliver a message, and instead, they email or text.Another example is a family who wants to have dinner together instead of going upstairs to notify them one prefers to write a message to each because they find it hard to walk. Even though it saves time, it is of paramount significance to just invite the friends with a word of mouth as it does make them feel highly appreciated (Norton & Strauss, 2012). With a mouth invitation, they can feel ones happiness and tell whether one is happy about them sharing dinner or not.
With the increased use of social media, there is the creation of a twisted self-image (Norton & Strauss, 2013). Social network users create lies about themselves and bring up something they are not. Individuals can post pictures in which they are looking great and perfect and share to everyone. Persons can never post pictures or information when in big problems like when someone they love leaves. All network users want to create a perfect self-image and try to depend on the imaginative thought instead of being true to oneself and others.
There is the diminishing of family closeness with the upsurge of social networking. Everybody in the family has no time for one another. Families are always on their phones and laptops chatting and face booking instead of spending time together. Within the families too, this has created misunderstanding and even brought about family breakups (Norton & Strauss, 2012).
Distractions are also brought about by the social networks (Dolan, 2016). People find it hard to concentrate on what is going around them because they are on the phone as some end up causing accidents because they were chatting on their phones while driving or crossing the road.
Even though social media is the best medium of knowledge and information exchange in the globe taking the world by storm, it has pressured people to adopt different lifestyles. The change of lifestyles brought by social networking is incomparable. Social media is in its entity good for the society. As the world continues to em...
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