Positive and Negative Impact of Social Media

Introduction

Social Media and the internet both are connected to each other, and both things are playing a phenomenal role in this world communication or global communication. In response to the Positive and Negative Impact of Social Media, the contribution of social media in this communicative world is totally different because social media has made communication as well as the collaboration system very easy and cheap. Once, it was very costly to communicate with other worlds, the news of other world was not available at the right time whereas it took two or three days to get the updated news. Therefore, the scenario is totally changed at the current time, because social media is a media that is delivering any update news, information and other important issues within a few seconds and it is only possible people are using social media for sharing the news of any corner of the world to let the people around them know, what is happening basically at this moment. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are a great contributor to this random change of social media usage because previously social media was limited to blogging but right now it is becoming larger and larger as well as the expansion of this social media is tremendous.

Positive and negative aspects of social media

Social media is like blessings for us to connect from any corner of the world as it has made the communication way more easy and comfortable. On the other hand, society has some negative issues because people are getting affected by it rather than living a social life. So, it has many more positive signs and some negative issues that are described below:

Positive aspects of social media

The way of living standard is changed with the introduction of using social media as the world is getting closer to us and within a single click, we can search for any important news or information.

Enhance connectivity or network:

The increase of connectivity with more possible or other external communities in different issues is only possible being engaged in social media because it is the easiest to expand connectivity or increasing social networks from any corner of the world. (Farhud, 2017).

Convenient communication:

Communication system becomes more convenient while the use of social media is introduced in this internet-based communication system because right now social media is a convenient tool to communicate from any corner of the world by using Facebook, WhatsApp, Wechat, Imo or Gmail apps.

Opportunity to share feelings and opinions:

It is so popular platform where people can interact with each other by sharing their views, thought, ideas, and important information. It allows so many people to share their feelings, regular updates, own opinion, or any other important news or information by using Facebook or twitter through the Facebook status system or twitter tweet system.

Enhance education:

Social Media is also using as a tool of education expansion in which students can study in a group sharing their ideas, knowledge, notes, hand notes, class notes with different educational as well study contents. The young generation is largely using social media platforms for their learning and knowledge sharing (Al-Deen and Hendricks, 2011). Moreover, social media sites are helpful for students as there are so many pages or teams preparing videos for learning as well as knowledge purposes by which students can gather knowledge from it.  Facebook and YouTube both are playing a great role in enhancing education and knowledge sharing.

Fostering Business growth:

The growth of the business is highly affected by the use of social media as it helps in increasing sales by extensive product promotion, product advertising, and increasing brand loyalty.

• Advertising: Advertising has taken a huge place on social media sites like Facebook or Youtube. It is more beneficial to reach the potential customer within a short time as the users are connected with Facebook and Youtube for so many times in a day. At this moment, business people are doing the better use of social media sites to post their product advertisements from their Facebook page, or from their own YouTube channel. When this video shared in social media, the responses become huge to reach a lot of customers. (Richardson et al.).
• Increase sales: Social media has a good contribution to increasing sales because social media takes less time to reach customers. If the product features, product benefits, and usage are tagged in properly to sell the product, then the response will be huge from the customer (Lim et al., 2017).
• Brand loyalty: To increase brand loyalty, the contribution of social media is too much because social media helps in doing social media marketing to promote the brand and increase brand loyalty. Here the fact is that social media helps to get the immediate feedback of the customer for that particular product that basically works as the prospect of brand loyalty of a product and service by providing the best customer services.

Negative aspects of social media

Besides many positive sides of social media, it has some negative impact in our life.

1. Fake profile and relationship:

Social media is having so many fake profiles especially in Facebook, and therefore the relationship is built-in Facebook is also fake. As it does not need any subscription fee, and account opening is free of cost, everyone can create social media id in any name. Here, the legal compliance is silent, that’s why so many fake people are opened in social media that may hamper the personal life.

1. Spreading rumor: There is a group that involves spreading rumors by using social media platforms like Facebook and it is ultimately the symptom of sharing false information about a person or entity and it is the bad practice by those people who use social media for fulfilling their personal benefit.

• Addiction to social media: It is a very alarming situation that the young generation is getting addicted to using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram. Even, they are not interested to pass time with the outside world as well as other friends rather they involve in browsing social media websites. Therefore, the addiction in this social media is harmful to the academic study of the student and it may also create psychological problem (Ahn, 2011).

1. Anxiety and depression: Due to addiction in using social media, the depression among the people is increased as they are detaching from family affairs, friend affairs, and outside sports. People who are using social media, they feel anxiety in their life with huge stress (Coyne et al., 2020).
2. Cyberbullying: Cyberbullying in social media is becoming an alarming issue where the format of unwanted message sending, comments, or posts about others in increasing t attack personally other users. As a result, it may hamper the personal image of a user.
3. Cultural aggression: As the platform is free to all, so everyone can post anything that is like cultural aggression where people post adult or vulgar content and it is termed as the threat of violating culture.

Conclusion

At the present world, we cannot think of our life without using social media. The use of social media has been expanded in different aspects of our life such as professional life, personal life, and family life. Obviously, using social media is very good for us but at the same time, we have to remember that, the use of social media should not affect our personal life as well as others’ life. Moreover, we should be more conscious about the security measures of social media.

References

• Ahn, J. 2011. The Effect Of Social Network Sites On Adolescents’ Social And Academic Development: Current Theories And Controversies. Journal Of The American Society For Information Science And Technology, 62, 1435-1445.
• Al-Deen, H. S. N. & Hendricks, J. A. 2011. Social Media: Usage And Impact, Lexington Books.
• Chbeir, R. & Al Bouna, B. 2013. Security And Privacy Preserving In Social Networks, Springer.
• Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A. A., Zurcher, J. D., Stockdale, L. & Booth, M. 2020. Does Time Spent Using Social Media Impact Mental Health?: An Eight Year Longitudinal Study. Computers In Human Behavior, 104,
• Farhud, A. 2017. Social Media, Its Positive And Negative Implications On Society. School Of Distance Education Universiti Sains Malaysia, 8-12.
• Kaplan, A. M. & Haenlein, M. 2010. Users Of The World, Unite! The Challenges And Opportunities Of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.
• Lim, X. J., Radzol, A. M., Cheah, J. & Wong, M. 2017. The Impact Of Social Media Influencers On Purchase Intention And The Mediation Effect Of Customer Attitude. Asian Journal Of Business Research, 7, 19-36.
• Richardson, P., Choong, P. & Parker, M. Social Media Marketing Strategy. 2015 Business Research Consortium Of Western New York,
• Subramanian, K. R. 2017. Influence Of Social Media In Interpersonal Communication. International Journal Of Scientific Progress And Research, 38, 70-75.

Written by

Md. Shadequr Rahaman

Email: [email protected]