The Advantages of Social Media Outweigh the Disadvantages

This essay discusses the advantages of social media that outweigh the disadvantages. It explores the positive impacts of social media on communication, connectivity, information sharing, targeted advertisement, and news cycle speed.

Running head: THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
The Advantages of Social Media Outweigh the Disadvantages
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

1THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion....................................................................................................................................2
3. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

2THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
1. Introduction
The constant evolvement in the world of technology have made a major impact in the
world of communication and the ways in which people communicate with each other.
According to the latest trends, there has been a major form of change in the face to face
interaction of people based on the impact of several forms of social networking platforms. Based
on the advent of social media platforms and websites, people have found it easier to
communicate with their friends, which used to assume to be impossible previously. Social media
also possesses some kind of risks. As people of different age groups would have access to social
media contents, there would be a certain kind of risk that children might get exposed to adult
contents.
The discussion in this essay primarily puts a major focus on the positive impacts of social
media that are laid down within the lives of the people. The essay also discusses the major
advantages of social media that mostly outweigh the disadvantages of social media.
2. Discussion
The upcoming use of technology supported by social media has laid down several kinds
of advantages in the lives of the people. The platform has been a transforming factor in the lives
of the people and society. This kind of communication technology has been a factor of a boon for
the people who stay far from their families (Leonardi, Huysman and Steinfield 2013). Social
media technology has helped individuals to connect with their families, friends, and others
Based on this discussion, it could be taken into account that posting private pictures and
information on social media websites would bring new forms of security-related problems (Goh,
Heng and Lin 2013). The advanced technologies that are associated with social media platforms

3THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
often bring advanced features to the platforms. This includes sharing of locations to the public.
This might lead to harm to the individual. On the other hand, with the help of social media
technology, it has been helpful in recent times as the number of crimes on women has been
reduced immensely (Gikas and Grant 2013). This is possible as the movements of an individual
could be tracked easily and thus monitored over the social media. In these ways, social media
platforms have helped different individuals.
On the other hand, the rise of the Internet and high-level of connectivity technology,
people in recent times are making extensive use of social media as a form of common platform.
This is meant in order to establish a broad level of communication (Van Dijck 2013). The
primary reason is that with the help of different kinds of renowned websites such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Linked-In, people have been able to establish a connection with their family and
friends from different parts of the world and thus have been able to make new kind of
connections. In recent times, there are multiple forms of job requirements that are posted online.
People who would be subscribed to these vital connections would get an advanced notification
about any form of requirements (Bolton et al. 2013). Newspapers though also provide the same
news but the primary disadvantage is that print media takes a longer time to reach to a wider
level of public. Social media makes the facility to be easier as it is a reliable and fast media.
Some of the broadly discussed advantages of social media are discussed as follows:
1. Worldwide Connectivity – Social media platforms help in establishing a broad level
of communication with people who are separated much apart. Though Twitter, Pinterest,
Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn have become the most commonly used platforms still new
websites are popping up regularly (Leftheriotis and Giannakos 2014). These websites help in
connecting with people and thus form an interaction with the help of such Web-based networks.

4THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
The connections also serve a purpose for – locating assistance, sharing of political beliefs,
receiving personal advice, access to real-time news.
2. The commonality of Interest – Based on the impact of sharing of information on
social media, it could be useful for individuals to match their interest with other people of the
same choice of likes and dislikes. Based on the help of sharing or pinning facility, an individual
would be able to attract like-minded people and thus form a common circle (Laroche, Habibi and
Richard 2013). These virtual groups also help individuals to exchange techniques and ideas.
Different other social groups could also be helpful for people in order to solve their real-world
problems.
3. Real-Time Sharing of Information - There are some social networking platforms that
have enabled a kind of instant messaging feature. This feature helps people to exchange
information and chat with other individuals in a real-time scenario (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan
2013). This kind of feature could be helpful for teachers as they would be of great help for
teachers for facilitating the discussions performed within the classroom. This is possible as
teachers would be able to utilize the vast store of the web-based platform. This could be of
extreme use as it would save time for the teacher (Munar and Jacobsen 2013). This could also
prove to be helpful for the students as they would no longer have to be dependent on library
facilities in order to conduct a high level of research. Social media could also prove to be helpful
for engaging distracted learners. Social media would also provide power to managers within the
workplace for utilizing the technology in various team meetings. It could be used for different
conference organizers in order to update the attendance (Huang and Benyoucef 2013). The social
media platform could also be used for various business people for the purpose of interaction with
different prospects and clients. Some leaders within an organization also deploy tweets and other

5THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
kinds of social media updates during their presentation sessions. This kind of approach of use of
social media within events would help them to become much interactive. This would also help
the presenter to present his interactivity to a larger audience base.
4. Targeted Advertisement – Social media also helps in supporting different forms of
fundraiser organizations or a business owner to market their services or new products. Social
media technology has also helped these organizations to put forward their message to different
people on a 24/7 basis (Wood et al. 2013). Although social media platforms would be able to
spread the message of the organizations on a free basis, there are certain options to advertise
these messages based on payments. One of the major beneficial aspects of social media is that it
would help users to deliver content base on potential interest. The different social media
platforms help in offering a varied range of tools that would enable a certain business for
delivering specific contents to a specific form of targeted group. This kind of approach would be
able to reach to a wide range of audience and would also be helpful for minimizing the wastage
of time while reaching to the audiences.
5. Increase in the News Cycle Speed – Social media has also helped in revolutionizing
the speed at which news is circled to different people. In recent times, most of the news provider-
based organizations rely on social media websites for the collection and sharing of information.
Social media platforms that mainly includes Twitter has steadily become the mainstream source
for the generation of breaking news. The circulation of news over social media has been helpful
for an individual to gain access to real-time news within a few moments (Mergel 2013). This has
thus led to the major kind of development of a near form of an instantaneous cycle of news.
Many vital happenings in the world could be generated with the help of social media. This would
majorly be helpful for alerting the intended audiences of the concerning event. A part of the

6THE ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA OUTWEIGH THE DISADVANTAGES
increase in the news spread could be majorly be attributed to the use of mobile phones or
smartphones. Based on the impacts of social media, there has been a rise in the number of
purchased mobile phones.
3. Conclusion
Based on the discussion from the above topic, it could be concluded that the impact of
social media has many forms of advantages. These would be helpful for the people in order to
exchange vital form of messages. Social media platforms and websites that include WhatsApp,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others offer people the facility to have a chat with their
dear ones. These platforms also offer people to engage in new kind of connections and allow
people to chat, send messages, share pictures, video and audio. The impact of social media is
also becoming increasingly famous within every age groups. In the age of the Internet, although
people depend much on the Internet platform, these are followed by different kinds of risks.
Cyberbullying is also another form of critical risk, which could occur on social media. Though
the utilization of social media platforms has an imminent risk of threats to the privacy of people,
yet these disadvantages are generally outweighed based on the advantages supported by social
media.

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References
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