Pros and Cons of Social Media

Advantages of Social Media

First of all, one of the main advantages is that social media allows us to update ourselves on the latest happenings and news around the world. Sometimes media like television, newspapers may bring out false information, and they are usually slow, but by using social network sites we can get information quickly and accurately.

Furthermore, social networking sites can also come in handy as a new way to enhance the education of students. There are sites like Udemy, Full Sail University, and SkillShare where students are able to get courses to learn new skills or gain access to new fields of education, sometimes even for free. Social media can also benefit the students in a way where they gain inspiration and motivation to work better and concentrate on their projects.

Furthermore, staying connected with one another through social media is a way to connect with friends. If you are searching for our friends or relatives, there is no easier way to connect with them than through social media. Nowadays everybody has their own busy lifestyle, hence they do not have time to contact their old friends, yet social media do that job easily and connect this whole world in a specific place.

Disadvantages of Social Media

What are the cons of social media in modern life? On the contrary, social media have their reverse side effects. The disadvantage of social media is there will be no more face to face communications. Before social media appears in our world, we met our friends and relations face to face as much as possible, because that is the only way to meet them. But after the rise of social media, people prefer to meet their friends and relations via social media.

Moreover, nowadays when people go out to have gatherings, they wouldn’t talk or chat with each other. Instead, people will usually keep their heads bury into their phones, and this would affect the relationship between people. That's why social media has a big negative impact on the quality of life and communication. Even though keeping up with the latest news can update our mindset but using too much social media can result in us in getting addicted to it. We will end up with this FOMO culture. FOMO culture is a kind of social anxiety, it leads to concern that one is scared to miss an opportunity for social interaction, and that leads to social media addiction.

Last but not least is that children can easily get inappropriate content easily due to they are more capable now in learning how to jump through loops to satiate their curiosity. It is nearly impossible to keep away things you don’t want children to learn. For example, there are many pro-marijuana videos online as easy to access as a mistyped word in a YouTube search bar. Not to mention lewd videos disguised as harmless everyday videos, created to purposely get past YouTube’s restrictions. This can also be attributed to the elsagate scandal where thousands of videos were created to purposely breach into the YouTube Kids app. These videos tended to use popular characters in children’s media to gain children's attention, but all the characters were always doing things that are undoubtedly inappropriate for children. Things like violence, drugs, alcohol, and strange sexual situations even feature in some of these videos.

Conclusion

In conclusion, people use social media for entertainment and sharing information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of self-expression, but they can also lead to bad things. The benefits are keeping us updated with the latest news and enhancing our education, staying connected with each other given by Zhi Qing and Qiao Ying, while the drawbacks are lack of physical contact, addicted to social media and inappropriate information. I hope that our topic today can let everyone here understand about the advantages and disadvantages of social networking sites.