Aaron Rodriguez
Comm 1200
Holland Smith
February 28, 2016
Social Media
Social Media is a diverse platform in which a lot of information and opinions can be shared. However, with so many opinions and information out there and no censorship, some information may be inaccurate. Social Media can be a great resource to find out how people are thinking and feeling about certain issues. However, individuals looking for information may find unreliable sources and false information.
The biggest benefit of social media is the ability to connect with individuals who have the same interests as you. For example, those who play video games. In the past people who played video games were ostracized by others because of their uncommon interest with the rest of society. Now with Social Media, those who are into video games can talk to others with the same interests in chat rooms, follow hashtags and even broadcast and watch players play games. Another way that Social Media has advantages for society is with its ability to spread information quickly. For example, the black lives matter movement was a large movement that spread like wildfire. When anything that had to do with the injustices toward African Americans happened it was shown to everyone on social media. People liked, commented and reposted it and everyone could see what was going on and share their beliefs on the state of the social status of African Americans. In fact 50% of individuals get their breaking news through social media. This is because it is highly accessible because it can be found on your phone and now everyone has their phone always on them. Oppose to the news where someone has to find a tv or a paper. Even though news sites are online there is still the hassle of finding the website. Social media can also be used for law enforcement purposes. 67% of federal, state and local law enforcement surveyed think social media helps solve crimes. When police are looking for criminal suspects the first thing they use in order to find those suspects is their social media activity. They do that to find out their habits through the things that they post and like and this helps create a profile and find out how they think and what their motives are. Another tool that social media helps law enforcement is with the location services it helps show where criminals have been and where they might be and is a good tracking tool. It also helps get the public involved in finding suspects. Law enforcement can share the suspect and descriptions about them and the public can send information to law enforcement when they see the post about it. A prime example of this was in Cincinnati where Social Media was a key component in identifying and dismantling a local street gang and arrested 71 members in 2008. They created databases using social networks, existing police reports, and phone records then used software that they gathered from social media and established links between suspects. Social Media is also a large tool in growing small businesses and empowering women to be CEO’s. Social media empowers women to be CEO’s because most people who use social media are women.Many social media sites are dominated by women: 72% of Pinterest users are women, 58% of Facebook users, 62% of MySpace users, 60% of Yelp users, and 53% of Instagram users. This is because of the way that women's minds work. Women are more perceptive because in primitive times when men went out hunting women were left home to take care of children and take care of the “home”. They had to read emotional cues as well as organize the home. The way that this relates to today is that women are naturally more organized and more creative. This is why they dominate social media because with their organization and creativity they can create more aesthetically pleasing posts. Social media helps small businesses because it can rapidly share a product and show the features and benefits of a product in a short and concise way that won’t bore the audience. This is shown with the company Fifthtee, a merchandising company which sells t-shirts, hats and phone cases. The way that they started their promotional campaigns was through make-up. They would catch people’s attention through make up tutorials where women would draw penis’s on their face and then after the video was over they would promote the merchandise that would be in the video. This is somewhat the format that most small businesses use in order to increase exposure of their product. They find any way they can in order to catch users eyes and when users like it they tell their friends and it spreads like wildfire. Small business owners are also able to reach out to celebrities to endorse their product through direct messaging and tagging them. This is a quick way to reach out to possible sponsors and increase exposure of their product. Not only can social media start companies but it can also direct people to jobs of existing companies. Companies post job listings and what qualifications they are looking for the job. This makes it easy for people to find jobs because they are easily accessible because it is in the palm of their hand and it makes with a few button pushes they can get an interview for a job. This also makes the economy stronger because through all the new businesses being made and jobs being created. According to McKinley Global institute social media could add 900 billion to 1.3 trillion dollars into the economy so not only does social media help people in their personal lives economically but also it can help the economic stability of nations and help small countries develop into good economically standing countries. A big advantage of social media is the ability for it to motivate users. Whether it be through motivating people to learn how to cook through food tutorials or motivating people to live healthy lifestyles through gymgoal pictures and videos. When people see that good food is being made or a fit person is progressing in their fitness they too want to take control of their life and make the same food or start a new fitness plan. Although there are many benefits to social media there are also many consequences of using social media.
Social media is a great way for people to connect and share ideas however, there are many consequences of social media. The first one is the possibility of spreading false information. This happens because there is no censorship of the accuracy of the information being posted and if a post gets too popular then it can be accepted as the truth. On September 5, 2012 false rumors spread of of fires shootouts, and caravans of gunmen in Mexico City. This panic flooded the police stations in Mexico City with false calls of these issues and this slowed down the ability of the police to solve real crimes because of all the false calls and spam and all of this also temporarily closed school because of the mass panic of the public. Another con of social media is that it can lead to stress. On social media people post the best version of their lives and because of this people will feel that their own lives are underwhelming and unexciting because their friends lives seem so fun. This can lead to a loss of friendship according to a Pew internet report, 15% of adult social network users had an experience that cause a friendship to end and 12% had an experience online that resulted in a face to face confrontation and 3% of users reported a physical confrontation. These problems are created because people feel free on social media and spread rumors because the person isn’t right in front of them and there will be no immediate repercussions and people tend to misunderstand what other people post and think they are talking about them when they are talking about someone else. This leads to cyberbullying when people try and start arguments or misunderstand what others post.According to consumer report 800000 users were cyberbullied and were twice as likely to attempt suicide. This happens because it is so easy for people to target others and say things to them that we would never say to their face. Also they do this because it is easy to manipulate pictures with photoshop and other computer programs to make humiliating images of others. Another con of social media is the encouragement of ameture advice to medical issues. One in five americans use social media for healthcare information. This can lead to misdiagnosis because if they are asking people who aren’t doctors there is a lot of opinions on what something could be. Many diseases have similar symptoms especially in the early stages and this can lead to many individuals to think they have more serious issues than they really do have. Also groups can promote dangerous medical practices such as anorexia, suicide and deliberate amputation. In North Carolina a blogger was criminally charged with practicing dietetics or nutrition without a license and offering dangerous nutritional advice about the paleo diet and posing as an expert. People can be easily fooled because they can not see the qualifications of the people posting that claim to be experts on subjects like people who have their own physical practice have to do. Also medical associations can not regulate what people post on the internet because even though they are posting false information people have the right to post what they want because of freedom of speech. People have the right to say what they want to say because of free speech. This ability of free speech also allows individuals to post false information about medical topics which because of no censorship and regulation individuals can get misdiagnosis’.Jeff Benario a medical doctor found on a search for eczema on twitter that out of the first 100 results 84 of them was spam and others gave harmful and bizarre advice such as using toothless fish to eat the eczema skin. Not only can social media spread the wrong information but also it can spread ideologies that specifically hate other groups or as some call them “ hate groups” . A summer 2012 baylor study showed that Facebook hate groups cause an increase in racial slurs and stereotypes not seen in mainstream media like the blackface images and the comparison of Barack Obama to an ape. With these hate groups spreading their words to encourage hate they can also recruit the youth to share similar ideologies. This is because in some cases this is their first encounter with multiple viewpoints. For most of their lives they have only heard the viewpoint of their family and this is the first platform that young individuals hear other sides of an argument. Hate groups can use this to their advantage by luring in young users to their page and share their ideology to the youth creating a young America that is spiteful towards certain groups. Also in the classroom social media can be a detriment to the learning environment because social media encourage cheating. Information is so accessible to young people in the digital age that they can not help to cheat. Students can also post class test, homework and other important things such as standardized tests to enable other students to cheat. Students in California, New York City and Houston posted photos of standardized tests allowing students who had not taken the test to see the questions and potentially find answers.Another issue with social media is the advertising practices that invades users privacy. Marketers can use data analysis from Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. to find out what people want. People don’t even have to post about it for marketers to find out what people are interested in because they can track where people click. Through simple algorithms the can find out everything about an individual from where they live, to sexual orientation, to their personality traits. This can be a harm to society because they may not want companies to know all these things about them and they should have the right to share the information which they want to share to the world and not be forced into sharing information they were never asked for.
In conclusion there are many benefits as well as many consequences to using social media. Social media can spread information quickly and create new connections and communities where people can bond and interact as well as start their own companies and create their own economic success. However it can also be a harm to society through the lack of security and censorship of the content being posted which can lead to false information as well as increasing the possibility of cyber bullying. To sum it all up social media can be a good and bad thing depending on how users use it and it is up to them on the community that is created by social media.Users now have the ethical responsibility to create a fun and safe community for everyone which also can be informative and accurate.
