Advanced Critical Writing Article 2022

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Advanced Critical Writing
The article, “Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media”,
was co-authored by Timm Wagner, Christian Baccarella, Jan Kietzmann, and Ian Paul
McCarthy. Previous researches and practices have concentrated on the “bright side” of social
media with an aim to understand and assist in leveraging the manifold opportunities brought by
social media (Berthon, Pitt and Kietzmann 2). Yet, it is increasingly notable that this
technology presents big risks for communities, companies, peoples, and the society at large.
These big risks are what (Christian, Timm and Jan 435) term the “dark side” of social media
and include fake news/ propaganda, addictive use, cyberbullying, online witch hunts, trolling,
and privacy use. In this assignment, I will critically analyze the negative side of social media and
explain the unwanted outcomes of this technology besides its world wide’s known incredible
“bright sides”.
According to (Christian, Timm and Jan 438), social media has revolutionized the
manner in which people, society, and organizations create, share, and use information from each
other. The purpose of this article is illustrating the diverse nature of the dark sides of social
media as well as describing the undesirable outcomes of using this technology. Mainly, the study
is based on the EU younger citizens (Christian, Timm and Jan 432). The use of social media
(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp) greatly differs from traditional media use

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(television and newspapers). In this article, the authors have used contemporary methodologies
that suit the attributes of social media such as ethnography. The scholars have used social media
honeycomb frameworks to help them in explaining the dark side implications for each of the
seven functional building blocks: sharing, presence, identity, conversations, groups, reputations,
and relationships. The authors conclude that social media is used everywhere and that by
analyzing the 7 building blocks – presence, conversations, reputation, relationships, sharing,
grounds, and identity (Allcott and Gentzkow 212).
Most studies focus on the benefits of social media to organizations, individuals, and the
larger society. These studies mention the positive rewards of social media and highlight how
engagement between consumers and firms gets democratized. To companies, social media
improves public relations, customer service, personnel decision making, and product
development (Alexa Internet 2). Today, approximately 50 percent of EU companies use social
media to analyze user generated content. Interactions on social media have undoubtedly
increased (Buckels, Trapnell and Paulhus). However, no matter of the high number of
opportunities that social media create, certain incidences show that social media undoubtedly has
its ‘dark sides”. In the article, the authors point at cyberbullying, faking of news, privacy and
confidentiality invasions, trolling, addictive use, and online firestorms as the most emergent and
common demerits of social media. Also, a survey conducted in 201 revealed that Britons aged 14
to 24 years hold that social media such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram exacerbate self-
consciousness (Buckels, Trapnell and Paulhus 66). At least 35 percent of users of social
media encounter loss of sleep, increased anxiety levels, and depression.
The article has strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of this article rotate in the
argument that social media can have detrimental and negative effects on a society. The article