Over the years, with the increased personal and business use of email, social media gained ground and have since entrenched itself in everyone’s life via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Businesses reap huge benefits from social media as their products become more visible to clients. They can quickly respond to trends as well as cut costs on traditional advertising. Clients’ access to customer services for various concerns via websites improves the bottom line. Social media makes information sharing more efficient, generates discussion and directs people to interesting sites.
On the personal side, social media facilitates staying in touch with family and friends on a global scale. If family members are abroad, a message sent just a few minutes ago could receive instantaneous reply. Social media is also helpful in client referrals and job searches. It helps professionals conduct research via LinkedIn, for example.
While there are positives to social media, there are a number of negatives as well. Friends on the social media plane can be into the hundreds. How are meaningful connections differentiated from casual acquaintances? With the amount of networking involved in social media, there is a marked decrease in attention span in some end users. Anything that has more than three paragraphs becomes too long to read. Along with a shorter attention span, productivity at work or even at home may suffer. There is less human interaction because everyone is continually on one or two social networking site following and contributing to interesting topics. The gradual loss of privacy is the biggest effect of social media on society. To some extent information normally kept confidential is given up easily which may have contributed to the increase of identity theft crimes.
Much like the telephone, social media has had a huge impact on society. Communication is vastly improved, jobs are generated, and everyone is in touch with family, friends, and the workplace. Craig Hodges said, “A fixation with connecting with ‘friends’ online comes with the risk of disconnection with friends waiting for you to be present in the offline world,” a reminder to remain connected in the physical world.