Key features of social media

Discuss about the Advantages And The Disadvantages Of Social Media.

Social media are the type of technologies that are computer mediated facilitating the creation and for the purpose of sharing of the various expressions by the use of “virtual networks” and “virtual communities”. Social medias are nothing but a collection of the channels of the communication used for the purpose of interactions, to share various components and for many other purposes. Social media is based upon the internet allowing individuals to interact with one another and for exchanging various details (Stieglitz et al.,2014). Different types of social media include “micro blogging sites”, “wiki”, “Facebook”,” twitter” and many more. This report discusses about the brief explanation of the features along with the advantages and the disadvantages of Social media.

Social media can be accessed by the technologies that are having access to internet.by the use of the social media services individuals, organisations and communities can share their thoughts and continue discussion on the topics uploaded on the websites via smartphones, computers, laptops, tablets and many more electronic devices having internet access (Fuchs et al., 2013). The keys feature of the social media are listed below:

• Social media can only be accessed by the use of internet.
• The various things uploaded on the social media by the users are the main contents on the social media. This includes the videos, images, texts, comments and the data that are generated by the online based interactions.
• Different profiles are created by the users for the purpose of using the social media sites.
• Social media helps in creating connections between different individuals.

Social media has effected the world in many ways. Social media has evolved with the development of the technologies. Developing technologies and the developed technologies greatly helps in shaping the social media (De Vries Gensler & Leeflang, 2012). The various effects of social media on the different aspects of life are listed below:

• Impact on the politics: The effect of social media in the field of politics has increased a lot. Social media plays a vital role in the various political campaigns. By the use of social media people are able to promote their views more freely. Social media helps in creating a whole new influential organisation (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung & Valenzuela, 2012). Which can be very much helpful to any “marginalised groups”.
• Impact on the society: Almost every individual in the whole world uses social media. It is possible by the use of the internet. Everyone are able to express their thoughts and beliefs in the social media not only that they can also find many peoples having the same thoughts and beliefs which will make them know that they are the not the only person having those ideas and beliefs. People can share “memes”, “publications’, and many more things via social media. Use of social media lowers the daily activities in the society and make the peoples more addicted to the world of virtualisation (Laroche et al., 2012). We can see the Children’s in our society are addicted to social media like “Facebook”, “WhatsApp” and many other social networking sites. Instead of going out and playing they are sitting inside the houses and busy with this type of sites. Many believe that the social media has greatly encouraged peoples to use the computers and mobiles at a larger rate for expressing individual concerns without involving themselves in the real activities (Tess, 2013). For the purpose of supporting some issue people only use the “like” or share button instead of physically involving in the supporting process of the issue.
• Impact on the commerce: Social media can be used as a medium by different organisations for the purpose of connecting with different customers and to provide the customers with the different information’s about the norms and products of the company. Social media helps in increased popularity amongst the customers thereby helping the organisations to increase its revenue. Studies have suggested that by the use of the social network in the workplaces can help in increased knowledge of the workers and also for sharing the knowledge’s. Social media helps in removing the barriers between the workers thereby helping in better business performance and workers with more knowledge about the different activities of the business (Kwahk & Ge, 2012). However, a negative image and less number of sharing in the social media can cause the ruining of the business. A negative image of the company in the social media can cause reduction in the number of customers thereby making the business face huge amount of losses. Bitter experience by the companies has made many of them remove the social sharing button from their official websites.
• Effect on the work: Social media helps a lot in the process of recruiting and hiring of new employees (Sponcil & Gitimu, 2013). It has been seen that most of the managers responsible for hiring makes their decision that are dependent on the information’s of an individual that are provided on the social media. Social media sites like the “LinkedIn” is used for this purpose of choosing workers and for providing someone a platform for someone to choose their career (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013).
• Effect on the purpose of development and training: Individuals looking for jobs are more advantageous in getting jobs by the use of latest information’s provided on the social media. Many social media help in the learning process of the students. Social media has also favoured in the long distance learning process (Selwyn, 2012). The negative effect of distance learning is there are many cases of cheating in the social media platform.
• Effect on the moral challenges: Social media has been blamed as the main reason of promoting social ills. This includes “cyberbullying” and “privacy issues”. Teenagers are mainly responsible for the cyberbullying. The introduction of new social media sites is making the teenagers to face more pressure in adopting the new trends in the social media. A research has also shown that most of the teens are bullied on social media whereas the others are responsible for the bullying (Kowalski et al., 2014). For the purpose of spreading rumours and to share videos for the purpose of destroying reputations and for blackmailing social media is used. Lack of security in many social networking sites can lead to threats in the privacy of an individual.
• Effects on relationships: As social media is encouraging in establishing new friendships and for creating an artificial bond between peoples. Social media has greatly decreased the communication gap between two peoples but has also effected in the physical interaction between them (Junco, 2012). Social media not only helps in promotion of relationship between individuals but also promotes brand loyalty along with increasing the customer business relationship.

Social media is having a lot of advantages. Social media is the latest trends nowadays (Laroche, Habibi & Richard, 2013). The most important advantages of social media are listed below:

1. The most important advantage of social media is it helps in connecting of the peoples who are far away from each other. Social media allows peoples to connect to any people living in anywhere of the world. For the purpose of creating connection there is no need of considering any physical, social or geographical barriers.
2. Besides helping in connecting people it also helps in the fields of education also. Lots of students and teachers get huge benefits from the social media. Social media allows the option of following thereby helping any one to follow someone for the purpose of learning something from the person they are following.
3. Along with the above mentioned help social media also helps in many other ways like earning, advice and many mores.
4. Social media also helps in providing information’s and also provides the latest information’s about the things that are taking place around us. Traditional mediums do not provide us with the true news but social media does provide us this information’s and the real news.
5. Social media helps in promoting of various products and helps in gaining the attention of many customers. It provides a large platform for the purpose of connecting with the peoples for the purpose of promotion.
6. Social media helps a lot in creating awareness among the people regarding various sensitive issues (Korda & Itani, 2013).
7. Social media can be used by various NGO’s for the purpose of raising funds and taking assistance for the poor’s and the needy peoples.
8. Helps the government to keep of the daily incidents.

Besides having so much advantages the social media platform is also having a lot of disadvantages (Baruah, 2012). The disadvantages of social media are listed below:

1. The most important disadvantage of social media is cyberbullying. The most effect one of cyberbullying are the teenagers. Either most of them are affected due to cyberbullying of the ones who are doing this.
2. Another threat of social media is hacking. This means putting of details and personal information of social media can lead to hacking of the personal data and may also effect the life of a person.
3. The popular use of social media has led to an addiction towards this. This type of addiction is very bad and can lead to disruption in the life of the peoples. Unlike cyberbullying addiction is causing harmful effect mostly on the teenagers.
4. Ruining of someone’s reputation is easily possible on the social media as there is lack of certain security steps. It is possible to create someone’s false image on social media very easily (Kwon et al., 2013).
5. Social media is making peoples become lazy thereby effecting the health of the individuals. Besides effecting the health, it also creates disorder in the daily routine of an individual.
6. Following someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol or someone who is wealthy makes the followers believing in the views shared by the followed person. Which initially results in people doing the same negative things(Yang et al., 2012).
7. Social media can greatly affect the relationship between two peoples and are also responsible for many cases of cheating in relationships.
8. Seeing the stunts performed on the social media causes many deaths.

Conclusion:

Looking into the affects and the advantages and disadvantages of the social media helps to conclude that along with various positive outcomes there are also many negative outcomes. We can also conclude to the fact that with the advancement in technology social media is changing the lifestyle of the peoples. People are getting more and more addicted toward the social media as the internet rates are decreasing and it is much more easy to get access to internet. No one can escape the effect of social media now a day. The separation of social media from the online world is totally impossible. The best method of avowing the risk on social media to is think before implementing.

Effects of social media (negative and positive)

References:

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