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Essay on Social Media: Meaning, Advantages, and Disadvantages

Meaning of Social Media

Social media refers to various online communication channels indulged in activities like interactions, sharing of content, ideas, and information. From a modest beginning in the early seventies, Social media has indeed come a long way. Today, there are more than 2.50 billion social media followers around the world. The growth of Social media and its impact on society has increased manifold in the last decade.

However, there are a few drawbacks as well to the extensive proliferation of social media into our lives. In this article, we would enlist both advantages and disadvantages of social media for the benefit of our readers.

Advantages of Social Media:

  1. It is a great platform to offer help or guidance on various issues.
  2. A ready source of information and unbiased news.
  3. People can connect with each other irrespective of their location and differences in opinion.
  4. One of the greatest platforms for advertising and promoting various products and services.
  5. Positive comments about a company on social media platforms can build a company’s reputation immensely.
  6. Blogs, podcasts, communities etc. help exchange ideas and share opinions with like-minded people, project one’s creative talent and promote social causes.
  7. Social media platforms have proven to be a great help to enable employers to connect with able job seekers and workers.
  8. Creates awareness and changes lives in a positive way.
  9. Used by Governments to monitor and control criminal activities.
  10. Helps students, teachers, and experts to connect and learn about various subjects.
  11. Promotes creativity and out of the box thinking.
  12. Large audiences as various platforms have a huge number of followers.
  13. Cost-intensive and effective than traditional advertisement channels.
  14. One can stay in touch with friends and family members at all times for free.

Disadvantages of Social Media:

  1. Used for committing various scams and frauds.
  2. Spreading false stories and rumors can affect the reputation of businesses and individuals alike.
  3. Being glued to computes or smartphones affects people’s health as they develop a more sedentary lifestyle.
  4. Incidents of identity theft, hacking and social engineering have become commonplace.
  5. Increase in the number of imposters and social media trolls.
  6. Spending long hours on various social media platforms results in sleep deprivation.
  7. Glorifies alcohol and drugs usage in some cases.
  8. Social media is highly addictive and is one of the major reasons why people have become less interactive and social nowadays.
  9. Instances of cyberbullying have increased.
  10. Angry outbursts or complaints from the employees on social media can lead to a serious reputational loss for employers.
  11. Urge to be active on social media sites at workplace lowers worker productivity.

To sum it up, whether social media acts as a boon or a bane depends on the person using it.

Abhishyand Kumar