Why Social Media Isn’t a Social Menace

Social media can be found everywhere in all forms. It could be Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, or even a blog. All these platforms share some similarities in one way or another, but the fact is for the most part they are largely different. Twitter is mostly a place where you talk with people while Youtube on the other hand, is a platform to share and watch videos where a lot of people don’t actually interact with anyone. Some say that social media as a whole is an issue and should be stopped. I am here to tell you otherwise.

Let’s first talk about the elephant in the room, why do people think social media is bad in the first place? There are a couple big reasons why people are so against social media. The first being that they believe it takes away the human in person connection of talking face to face and can lead to communication issues and potentially a lack of communication in understanding in general. The second main issue is the negative unpredictability of social media. What I mean by this is the bad language or visuals that could possibly influence younger people, including cyber bullying. First I want to tackle the concern of human interaction and communication. I personally believe that for shy introverted people, social media is probably the only place they are able to express themselves and is for a lot of people the gateway for actual human interaction. Taking that gateway from these people would be taking away that human interaction people say they are missing out on. I believe it’s the same way for communication skills. Most people are awkward and don’t really know what to say to people when they first meet someone. Social media gives people an opportunity to meet someone new and talk to so many people everyday. Because of that they develop even more communication skills, then they would in a normal environment. The concern of bad influence is a valid one. There are terrible people out there that will try to get you to believe in the terrible things they believe in. Fortunately, these social media platforms know this and have taken measure against it. The platforms themselves have systems and rules built into them to make it so bad influences can’t be allowed to happen. It isn’t only the platform that punishes and disdain this type of behavior, but the people on the platforms as well speck out and discourage this type of behavior.

The facts are that most of the concerns you might have are already taken care of. Most people are good and these people form community and relationships that couldn’t form without social media. Though there are some bad people out there just like in the real world those people are exposed and dealt with accordingly. Social media is the new way of staying informed and connected and shouldn’t be feared but embraced.

“Circle of phones” by csaila is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0