The best way to examine social media is to consider its positive and negative effects on society. We will start with the positive effects as we want to begin this piece on a high note.
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Positive Effects
The positive effects are debatable, depending on who you are. The influence of social games is arguably positive in the eyes of some and negative in the eyes of others. Of course, no one can argue with the positives of communication and connectivity, although there are downsides to how connected social media is.
Influence on Social Games
Social media has been another revolution opening the social side of gaming. Several classics, like online demo slots and poker, have had a major boost from social media. Now, you might be wondering how this is positive, and here it is. Social media has given the little guy a chance to show people what their game or app can do, and it has a chance of going viral.
Before social media, you would have had to have a multi-million sterling or dollar budget to advertise on TV and in magazines. Now, the little guy can get a break, all thanks to the connectivity of social media, which brings me to the next positive effect of social media.
Communication and Connectivity
The most critical positive benefit of social media is that people can communicate with each other around the world. People can communicate when they are far away from each other. People have close friends, and distant people can constantly communicate via social media online.
Children can have a closer relationship with their parents in a far place. As parents can know their child’s schoolwork and give some help or guidance, teachers can also support parents with educational activities for children.
In addition, nowadays, networking has become more and more feasible. Social media are popular in helping one with professional networking. You can benefit your career by using social networking sites. Then, you can find a job and receive a job offer through these sites.
The Negative Effects of Social Media
The three main concerns people and government organisations have with social media are privacy and the impact it can have on health, especially when cyber-bullying is a real thing. Of course, one of the main worries is how social media is easily manipulated to spread misinformation.
Privacy Concerns
One of the issues I have with social media, and speaking from personal experience, is that once someone has hacked your Facebook account and changed your email and password, there is no way back in. When someone has access to your account, they can access all your messages. It’s quite a worrying thought.
On top of this, privacy issues come with the freedom to post pictures on social media. How often has Facebook auto-tagged you a picture you didn’t want to be seen in? If you are not tagged, your face is now on the internet on someone’s Facebook account, and you probably don’t know it.
Impact on Mental Health
Social is damaging to young people’s mental health because many of the profiles and success stories youngsters are attracted to are those of wealth and success. Now, many of it is fake and over-hyped by the people posting, but some of it is very real.
The negative effect on mental health is that youngsters feel pressured to be beautiful or wealthy, and if they don’t fit into the category, they can often feel inadequate, which can lead to mental health issues.
This issue wasn’t born when social media came online; it all began with magazines that began to specialise in wealth and beauty in the early 90s. Then, TV became prevalent, and people could visually see others’ beauty and wealth in motion. When the Internet was born, the magazines went online.
Social media comes last in the list of influencing factors that cause mental health issues. What we have always seen on TV and in magazines when it comes to health and beauty was enhanced on social media.
We can also blame smartphone tech because social media
Spread of Misinformation
Since social media first came online, misinformation has been a concern. As opposed to news outlets, magazines,, and TV channels, which are in some ways bound by publishing and social responsibility laws, social media is free for all. Anyone can post anything.
There are tons of examples of the spread of information on the internet. The Jonny Depp Versus Amber Herd case spread from the UK to the USA, and misinformation was that Depp had been found guilty in a British court, which was untrue. The case was Depp Vs The Sun newspaper, and the simple case of whether The Sun newspaper believed what it was printing was true, and the company proved this.
Subsequently, when the court battle that was Depp Vs Heard came to light in the US, misinformation about the UK case hit social media, and for a while, the court case was the trending topic on most social media channels. In the end, Depp won the case against his ex-wife Heard, but there is still misinformation saying he was found guilty versus Herd in the UK courts, which is untrue.
Another example may also be Donald Tump’s original presidential candidate role, where some say social media was used to spread misinformation about Trump and Hilary Clinton, the two leading candidates to take the presidential seat.
