Social Media Resources: Risks and Benefits in Client Communication

This report explores the utilization of social media platforms for connecting clients with community resources, emphasizing both the advantages and potential risks involved. It highlights the benefits of social media, such as its broad reach and rapid communication capabilities during crises, while also addressing concerns like the spread of unreliable information and potential breaches of patient confidentiality. The report further discusses the risks associated with community resource referrals via social media, particularly the presence of fake identities and immoral individuals who may misuse these resources. It underscores the importance of conducting thorough background checks before referring individuals to community services to ensure resources are allocated appropriately. The document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and resources for students.

Social Media
Resources

Table of Content
Reasons for Social media Usage................................................................................................................................. 3
Risk Associated with Referring Clients................................................................................................................... 3
Risk Factors in Community resource referral...................................................................................................... 4
References.......................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Reasons for Social media Usage
Era of 21st century can also be seen as an era of rapid globalization, technology
revolution, emergence of internet and social media marketing as well as establishing a
culture of innovation and creativity. Every organization or industry has felt some or
major impact on their businesses due to this growing euphoria around the internet and
social media platforms. The same holds true even for health professionals, even in terms
of using social media as a means to connect clients with the community resources. Some
of the underlying benefits of the same are:
Reach of the Platform
Social media is one platform which is not specific to any gender, age group or isn’t
specific to any industry or professionals. This is the biggest benefit this platform
provides to professionals working in any industry. Social media platform gives the kind
of reach to the clients which are impossible in any other form of media channel. Clients
by getting a good reach have more options to either contribute towards the resources of
the community or any other way. Thus, making it beneficial for both the clients and any
other benefactors of community resources (Wellman & Gulia, 2018).
Communication during Crisis
Social media platform not only has a great reach, but it also allows for the
communication to travel faster and across various channels instantly. This is helpful
while communicating with the clients in case of emergency or while making a plea to
the clients or community for help.
Risk Associated with Referring Clients
Poor Quality Information
One of the most common risk associated with social media communication these
days is the non- reliability or assurance of the information on social media to be true or
fake. A lot of industry miscreants and other people are teaming up to dupe people by

connecting them with fake people and also putting them in a situation which is not so
easy to handle. Thus, the biggest risk is to identify the true source with fake sources and
then consume the content on the web.
Patient Security Breach
Another major risk here is the breach or confidentiality agreement between the
client and the health professional. Under no circumstances the healthcare professional
is supposed to shed light on the health condition of any patient, at least not without his
or her written consent. But, with social media, this ceiling gets broken, and client
information can also be accessed easily by the other community members, which most
definitely is a bigger risk for clients (Wellman, 2018).
Risk Factors in Community resource referral
The biggest risk encountered on social media while making a decision for
community service referral is connected with too many fake identity or immoral people
who are present on the web just to misuse the community resources. Thus, it is most
important to do a good background check on the person before referring him/ her to
the community resources. Else, the resources can go into the hands of people who
actually don’t require it, thus doing away with the entire purpose of the community
service in the first place (Graham, 2017).

References
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (2018). Net-surfers don’t ride alone: Virtual communities as
communities. In Networks in the global village (pp. 331-366). Routledge.
Wellman, B. (2018). Networks in the global village: Life in contemporary communities.
Routledge.
Graham, M. (2017). Introduction. In Reflective Thinking in Social Work (pp. 15-41).
Routledge.