With the growing technological advancements every day, more people try to grasp the benefits on a personal level. Social media is one such technological gift which most people have been drawn to. Especially the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have managed to capture a wide array of audience in a few years. Let us see some of the major advantages and disadvantages of social media in our lives.
It has done the job of effectively bringing people together and provided a great platform for people to interact and connect with each-other. Social media impacts in community and relationship building as well. It has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate with each-other.
Like every coin has two sides, everything including social media has both good and bad aspects in our lives. Its power is being manipulated to either enhance our lives or let it manipulate us to degrade it. It has seen a tremendous growth in the last decade.
What is Social Media?
Majority of us are aware of the term, ‘social media’ but how do we actually define it?
Social media definition is any application or website that lets you create a content and share it among masses to build a healthy connection. To simply put, it is any platform that enables social networking online. So, such platforms are often known as social networking sites as well.
Some of the major social networking sites or platforms are:
Here are Some Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media
Top 11 Advantages of Social Media?
Social media has proven its worth to the society in a lot of different ways, let us look at the top 11 advantages of social media.
- Connections Across the World
Social media provides us an opportunity to connect with anybody from any place across the borders. It has done an effective of bringing people together. Communicating and sharing views has been easier with efficient technology.
Its easily accessibility and user-friendliness has made it more popular among masses. It connects everyone irrespective of their demographics, race, religion, or class.
- News and Information
With so many people available online, it becomes a great platform to share news and useful information to generate awareness among masses within a short period of time. You can keep yourself updated with the latest information and happenings from around the world.
Many a times, the news on television or other media platforms are biased, social media serves the purpose of providing true and right information to us.
- Brand Promotions
Since the reach of social media is huge, businesses manipulate this nature to gain their own benefits. They effectively use social media to promote their brands online. Now your target audience is not limited, people from all across the globe can be potential customers.
- Educational Purposes
Technology fascinates teenagers and youngsters the most. Social media has completely revolutionized the young generation. Many educational technologies researchers support using social media for educational purposes.
They have developed effective distance education medium through social media to help students learn from anywhere.
- Work for a Better Society
Social media has proved to be an effective tool in promoting actions for noble causes. You can raise donations, generate awareness, and help the ones in need. Nowadays, NGOs use this platform to promote the social welfare causes and raise donations.
- Spy and Fight Crimes
Government agencies use social media to spy on suspicious and malicious activities to spot criminals. This makes it a useful platform to fight crimes.
- Builds Business Reputation
People free to share anything online. The positive reviews and comments for your business can prove to be much helpful to set up a good brand recognition. It enhances the company goodwill.
- Community Building
You can contribute to build a better community by helping others online. Share your issues and views with the community to get help. You can ask people for some advice or money-related problems too. Like-minded people can connect together to work towards a common belief.
- It’s Free
The major importance of social media is it’s absolutely free. Anybody can join it irrespective of their social stature. You don’t need to spend a penny to draw all its advantages.
- Generate Revenues
You can use social media wisely to even generate revenues. Social media marketing (SMM) is taking over the marketing world today. Lead generation and management can be effectively done using SMM.
- Measure and Evaluate your Performance in Real-time
You can measure and evaluate your performance easily with social media. Tracking and drawing analytics of any campaign is quick and easy using effective social media techniques.
Top 7 Disadvantages of Social Media?
Social media platforms allow people to freely express themselves, this sometimes is misused by certain people. And apart from that, there are certain other disadvantages as well. Let us look at the top 7 disadvantages of social media.
- Lack of Privacy Controls
Our careless of sharing the live location can prove to be beneficial to the criminals who can harm you with such sensitive information. Some people share too much about their lives on social media which makes them vulnerable to many mishaps.
Social media can’t draw any stranger actual intention for you. Your minute carelessness can cost your life too.
- Addictive Nature
The nature of the social media is highly addictive. It provides a wide range of features and people on board. It disturbs the general life of the users. It wastes a lot of precious time that could have been used to do some productive task.
The teenagers are the easy targets of social media addiction. Their too much involvement on social media eventually leads them to cut them off from the real social life.
- Increasing Frauds
Interacting with strangers increase the chances of you being trapped in scams. With the increasing desire of people to make easy money, the cases of frauds have increased via social media marketing.
- Cyberbullying and Threats
Threats, intimidation messages and rumors are be sent to the masses in order to create distress and chaos in the community. In the past few years, several teenagers have become the victims of cyberbullying.
Anybody can create a fake profile and spread rumors without leaving any trace. This has given the power to the wrong hands to manipulate the innocents.
- Hacking
The informational security on social media is minimal. It is very easy to hack anybody’s account and track and access their personal information. This is one of the most dangerous disadvantage of social media platforms.
- Negative Reputation Building
As social media can help build your business reputation, it has the potential to destroy it too. A few negative reviews and comments can turn even your most loyal buyers to lose faith in your brand.
Controversies on internet can destroy your company reputation within minutes.
- Health Hazards
It basically makes you a couch potato. Social media impacts negatively on your health if used excessively. It makes you lazy and brings disorder in your daily life. It can hugely impact your eyes and mental health too.
Conclusion
This debate about whether social media is good or bad would continue forever. The advantages and disadvantages of social media purely depend on how you use it? If you use it in a balanced manner being active and alert, then there’s literally harm.
It will prove to reap you best results only when used cautiously, because ultimately it is built to improve our lives
These are the major advantages and disadvantages of social media in our lives..
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1: What is Social media?
Ans: Social media definition is any application or website that lets you create a content and share it among masses to build a healthy connection. To simply put, it is any platform that enables social networking online. So, such platforms are often known as social networking sites as well.
Q2: What are the major social networking sites?
Ans: Some of the major social networking sites or platforms are:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
LinkedIn
YouTube
Snapchat
Q3: What are the advantages of social media?
Ans: Top 11 advantages of social media are:
1. Connections Across the World
race, religion, or class.
2. News and Information
3. Brand promotions
4. Used for educational purposes.
5. Work for a better society.
6. Spy and fight crimes.
7. Helps to build business reputation.
8. Contributes to community building.
9. It’s free.
10. Generate revenues using social media marketing (SMM)
11. Measure and evaluate your performance in real-time.
Q4: What are the disadvantages of social media?
Ans: Top 7 disadvantages of social media are:
1. Lack of privacy controls.
2. Addictive nature.
3. Increasing frauds.
4. Cyberbullying and threats.
5. Hacking.
6. Negative reputation building.
7. Health hazards.