Aspects of social media

Social media is a thing that is indispensable in our day-to-day life because of the ability to communicate with society in a quick and effective manner. According to sources of information, the social media platform named “Six Degrees” which was invented by Andrew Weinreich in 1997 is the first primary social media platform in the world. There are many social media platforms with millions of users today; such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Skype, Twitter, Messenger and Snapchat and many more. These platforms open doors for us to connect with society though we are staying far away from them. By way of explaining, the global village connects with us through a small device at our fingertips as a consequence of social media. As a coin consists of two sides, social media also exists in two ways; ergo, you must keep an eagle eye on social media networks when using those. So, in this article, we will be discussing the positive and negative aspects of social media.

What are the advantages of social media?

When we sort out the advantages of social media, it gives innumerable advantages. One of the most attractive points is getting day to day news alerts in every nook and corner immediately in a nutshell. When we log into social media, instantly we get the special news and incidents of the day in detail at our fingertips. Another special positive aspect of social media is getting the help of social media for education. This is more virally spreading throughout the world currently with the pandemic situation. Nowadays, there are many pages, channels and accounts related to education in various subject fields on social media platforms. Students can learn through a boundless variety of topics and subjects. Though you are living in Sri Lanka you can join live sessions which are happening in another country that is a thousand miles away. Another positive point of social media is we can connect with friends, family and society immediately though we are far away from them without any hesitation. This is one of the major positive impacts of social media platforms. We can improve our music, singing, art, photography, language, ICT and many more skills by using these platforms. Not only that, we can express our exceptional talents through these platforms and get reputation and fame and this will make a path for job opportunities too. Through social media, we can make new local and foreign connections and can communicate with them economically in an effective manner. As we are aware, we can be financially stable by making money through social media by selling and promoting different items such as clothes, food and many more. Not only by selling things, we can even make an income through writing and blogging too.

What are the negative impacts of social media?

Though there are numerous advantages of social media, keep in mind that there are negative aspects too. One of the negative aspects of social media is cyberbullying. In simple words cyberbullying is intimidating or threatening someone by using social media platforms. This is a very notable issue in the present society. By cyberbullying, many people get into critical mental diseases and some of them commit suicide even. One of the most prominent issues with the young generation is getting addicted to social media networks. Some people scroll through Facebook, Instagram for hours at a stretch and they become lazy to do their daily chores. This type of person may suffer from depression and anxiety. Especially this affects students and it becomes very challenging for them to get rid of it. Fear of missing out which is shortened as FOMO is a common topic and it frequently leads to checking out social media. This habit leads to mental diseases and it affects an unhealthy sleep pattern too. Child abuse and sexual abuse is also done easily through social media and children and the young generation is the main target of these types of activities. Most social media sites have a very little amount of online authenticity and people show off unrealistic expectations of life, friendship and love. But in reality, some of them live a bothersome life with many troubles. Because of that, we can’t judge a person by their social media accounts. Because of all these negative effects of social media, it doesn’t mean that social media is the main problem; it provides the medium, the way that people tackle it is the problem. I think social media provides us with a good space to discover the world and we should wisely use these platforms with a limit. If we use them in the appropriate method, we will get many advantages and will be able to avoid negative effects for sure.

In my point of view, social media is essential in our day-to-day life. You should keep in mind, that social media is not the most important thing in our life. We must use them accurately without overusing them and should get our tasks done.