The Benefits of Social Media Outweigh the Negative Aspect - Report Example

The benefits of social media outweigh the negative aspects The Benefits of Social Media Outweigh the Negative Aspects Social media has become part of our daily life in the recent past. Sites for social networking such as Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Google Plus have witnessed a tremendous growth across the globe. Presidential candidates, celebrities, business, parents and students are increasingly using these platforms. Many people tend to believe that social media can not be productive rather it is used for socializing. However, this paper will prove otherwise. Social media is vital in enhancing media literacy. This occurs because different ideologies are used as a main stream in passing new information via social media. In addition, one can understand how organizations have seized the phenomenon of networking to advertise their products and businesses. The evaluation of economic and social benefits of social media is encouraged. In the end, it can be concluded that benefits of social media outweigh the negative aspects from the perspective of online social and economic growth rather than enhancement of private infringement. From the Information technology perspective, social media has played a major role in media literacy with regard to cyber safety and digital literacy. Social media helps people to communicate effectively and help people determine scams within social media. For example, the use of LinkedIn helps people to manage their professional identity and connect with other people via internet. In this case, job seekers and employees become connected via cyber space, and help each achieve their goals. Media literacy is best described as the ability to understand works produced by media, evaluate their importance and utilize their moral teachings within an individual’s daily life effectively. A media literate person can learn how things occur in the world, as the world’s news is brought directly to our homes in different media forms. The media forms include TV, radio, newspapers, and internet among others that help people listen to peoples’ views and give their comments where necessary. In the end, more and more people are embracing social media a means of communication (Kossen, Kiernan & Lawrence, 2013). About 90 percent of young people in Australia aged between 16 to 19 years are reported to use social media on a daily basis (Collin, Rahilly, Richardson & Third, 2010) This is a very significant proportion which goes on to show just how deep social media has penetrated into people’s lives especially the younger generation. Conventionally, media literacy has been known to be taught focusing only on mass media, issues of advertising, censorship, and media ownership. Most people use social media for different purposes. Therefore, it is the best alternative for advertisement as it reaches many people fast and cheaply. However, in the current digital era, social media environments need a more complex web and digital literacy that mostly lacks in some schools. This is well explained by the fact that some students use social media for the wrong purpose. This means that some students lack the knowledge on how to integrate information and use them wisely in creating new knowledge. Initially digital literacy described the ability to communicate information to other people using advanced technology (internet). However, digital literacy comprises more than just chatting and connecting with friends. Digital literacy helps students to come up with entrepreneur skills, which are essential in the labour market today. This can be evidenced by the use of facebook to integrate business plans which are helpful in earning a living. It has been noticed that jobs are scarce, and it is upon the grandaunts to be innovative. This is the best way of earning a living rather than waiting for scarce job opportunities. When schools encourage students to embrace digital literacy, it is vital for the tutors to expound more on the concept. This will help the students understand the ideology of digital literacy. In the end, the students will appreciate the skills impacted and use them to sustain themselves effectively. In recent times, more and more internet users have been seen to use different social media platforms to communicate to friends or to organizations and businesses. This has brought people from different continents together. For instance, taking a site such as Facebook users can express their feelings and thoughts towards each other and towards businesses, products and so forth, by simply posting these sentiments on their friends’, businesses’ or organizations’ timelines. With such power just a click of the mouse away, individuals, politicians, businesses and other organizations have seized the opportunity that the social networks provide to reach as many people as possible and share their views opinions and generally disseminate information. It is a lucrative platform since unlike other media platforms such as TV, radio, and newspapers, one can easily quantify the success rate of the message. In Facebook for example, an individual, organization or corporation can open a ‘fanpage’ where users can ‘like’. The more the number of ‘likes’, the higher the message penetration (Kabani& Brogan, 2012). This ability to tell how well the message has reached the audience gives social media an edge over the other means of communication. Social media has also seen a rapid growth due to ease of access. For instance, in today’s world, the majority of people own mobile devices such as mobile phones (including smart-phones), tablet computers, eBooks readers, netbooks and laptops, which can access the internet easily. Furthermore, there are more than a billion smart phones in circulation worldwide (Kolakowskipara. 4). Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have phone applications which run on the major phone operating systems such as the android, iOS and Java platforms which users can easily use to access the internet fast. The smart phones are easier to carry and one can access internet anytime as long as there is network. Therefore business people can check the progress of their businesses easily and quickly via phones. Additionally, social media has come to present itself as one of the biggest rival to search as a way of discovering news content in the internet. The average news site receives about 7.5 per cent of referral internet traffic from Facebook alone (Kabani& Brogan, 2012). Twitter has also proved to be crucial tool for journalists. It has rapidly spread into newsrooms, altering the way news is sourced distributed and broken. This idea helps in speeding up the news cycle. Additionally, even though a specific news organization may not be the first to publish a piece of news, their agendas and discussions on that news article usually continue to shape conversations and outcomes Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which uses various social media platforms so as to achieve marketing communication as well as branding goals. This means, social media marketing strategies usually focus on efforts to come up with content that attracts readers’ attention and encourages them to share the information with their friends/social networks (Social Media Networking 2011). This ensures that a corporate message spreads fast from one user to the next since it appears to come from a trusted, third party source and not from the brand or company. Corporations such as D&G, technological companies and even Hollywood movies are maintaining a robust online presence by opening fan pages and accounts in different social media platforms. This has helped them increase their online visibility; track what the customers are feeling about their goods and services and has also helped them improve their service delivery and brand name. Despite the countless benefits of social media platforms, social networks have brought unforeseen and new threats to the privacy of internet users. These sites enable users to post virtually anything about themselves on the internet, these include; their identity, family members, contacts, home and work address, work experience, educational background, acquaintances and more. This therefore makes them vulnerable to criminals who can steal the user’s identities or abuse the victims in other ways. However, this situation can be rectified by both the government and the social networking sites themselves. For instance, in 2008, many companies removed their advertising messages from Facebook because it was being displayed on the pages and walls of controversial nature such as political and religious pages therefore hurting their brand (Pernisco, 2010). The governments should engage in active monitoring of the social networks privacy policies’ to ensure they adhere to set regulations. On the other hand, the social networking sites should make it as easy as possible for users to manage their privacy settings to protect all the sensitive information, which scammers can hack into easily. This can be done by creating advanced settings on personal security settings. In the end, information will be stored safely. Considering the discussion above, it is vital to note that social media is effective in provision of online social and economic growth rather than encouraging privacy infringement. The nature of social and economic growth encountered in many countries can be attributed to the use of social media services like Twitter and facebook. Online business operations have enhanced with the help of connecting zones. In addition, people learn more via social media as information goes round quite first. In order to minimize privacy infringement, states and social media analysts should focus on creating privacy settings that can not be hacked into by scammers. It is vital to encourage digital literacy in schools to enhance knowledge diversity. In the end, the aim of using social media to transform the economy socially and economically will be achieved. References Collin, P., Rahilly, K., Richardson, I. & Third, A. (2010).The Benefits of Social Networking Services, 1-27. Kabani, S. & Brogan, C (2012).The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue, US: BenBella Books Inc. Kolakowski, N 2012, Global Smartphone Usage Hits 1 Billion, viewed 13 May 2008, Kossen, C., Kiernan, E., & Lawrence, J. (2013).Communicating for Success, Australia: Pearson Australia. Social Media Networking 2011, viewed 13 May Pernisco, N. (2010). Social Media Impact and Implications on Society, Student Journal of Media Literacy Education, 1 (1), 1-17. Read More