Essay Example on Social Media: Positive & Negative Impacts on Society

Introduction

Social media technology is described as the applications and websites that are created for people to share content, thoughts, ideas and information all over the world by constructing communities and virtual networks. Social media has generally brought both positive and negative impacts in our daily society. A positive effect such as socialization, on politics and business, has been created as well as the negative impact such as fake news, privacy and cyberbullying. American culture is mainly made up of cultural artefacts that are unimaginable in amount because people that consider themselves American are too many. Modern America is made up of Social media and the internet as one of the most significant and largest cultural artefacts. Although this network connection has helped us connect around the globe with friends and family hence giving us a chance to break cultural cultures and international borders, it has come with a price. The negative impacts on American Culture are deeply concentrated to be compensated.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The combination of global reach and isolation which is a negative effect on our lives has eroded our culture. The society is being robbed of the comfort and trust it has placed in one another, replacing human fellowship, emotional and physical support with the virtual connection. People no longer have the ability to think independently and have no self-control because they started believing that they can acquire all the information they require from group posts on the internet. In the article ''Students Addicted to Social Media'', the Public Agenda and Media International Center on a 2010 personal study shared its information. This study was used to determine if or not 200 college Park Campus students would manage to stay off social for 24 hours. The students were then asked to share on the things that they keep themselves busy with no 24 hours of social media after the study.

Research and Conspiracy Theories

In today's society, individuals can access information instantly from anywhere unlike in the past where people had to travel to search for their library so that they can gain knowledge and get information. This gives people a chance to perform DIY experiments, create their desired experiments and take their own time in creating all the projects. On the other hand, it has also allowed people to learn government conspiracies in details and wicked ways that it uses to team up with businesses. People had so much faith in their government in the past, they listened carefully and believed everything said to them. People of the nation would even go to war when told by the government to, believing that there was a reason for that. Americans have changed in their thinking; they question all the actions taken by the government.

Identify Politics

Since the time the day elections were held, it is so unfortunate that people have arguments about who loves, hates and has a neutral feeling towards President Donald Trump. Most of the individuals lie on the neutral side claiming that it is because, most of the presidents are usually motivated by endless war like that of 1984, regime change and support to the corrupt corporations. Social media has made this easier for each individual by letting them remain in their chamber, listening to each of their supporting arguments and not listening from opposing sides. Most of the people from both sides have great and important points and that is why some chose to remain neutral to the whole situation. Social media feeds the American government with all these arguments and silently deals with burning issues. These arguments bring both positive and negative impacts.

Online Dating

The increase of social media in America has made most of the citizens to realize new virtual relationship cultural values that have been formed that also include individuality and privacy. World Wide Web has created social media sites which is one of the largest aspects that has contributed to social interaction norms forever. This idea is mostly affecting the younger American generation which is surrounded with so much internet culture as they grow up. Both adults and teens have adapted to the method of phone calls, instant messaging, texts to family and friends instead of doing the normal face to face communication. Messaging and texting through social media have led to language shifting, a lot of word abbreviation and this has contributed more to the language becoming casual. Virtual interaction has altered this phrase "to be honest'' to the acronym ''tbh''. Online dating has led to real relationships as people get to intermingle in real life as people share and get to know each other before meeting in person.

Friendships

Friendships that have been formed through Twitter and Facebook which are social media websites is also another way through which individualization and privacy cultural values are rapidly growing. Before internet existence, all the friendships were mainly started based on person to person physical interaction. Parents were also involved in their children friendship's development. The connections being formed by teens and kids through the internet are outside their parent's watch since they are so private. This has led to them having the desire to keep their lives away from their families which is a clear indication of individuality as a cultural value in America because of the immense use of the internet.

Acceptance of Diversity

There are some social media and internet positive cultural values which have introduced themselves as a cultural artefact that have brought about diversity acceptance and equality. In the last year, social media has developed to a strong platform for people of all ethnicities, ages and sexual orientations which are similar to be involved in fighting for social movement justice. This is because there is good access to a lot of information by people on social media about social matters such as sexism and racism whereby more and more people are educating themselves on. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement is as a prime result of all this. This movement was formed because of the rejection and systemic removal desire and the ever-present society racism. The case of mistreatment from the police which was proven to be towards the Black Americans was a problem that was passed to people through sharing of videos that were being posted in different social media platforms.

Social Media Movements

This movement has become a hashtag in different social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, in which people and social activists are passing the information on peace importance and fight against police brutality. If social media was not there, enough people would not know if such issues exist because the movements would not be existing. He for She movement is an example of another Social justice movement which accepts diversity and has also become a Twitter hashtag. This movement was started to raise feminism awareness and clash traditional beliefs that are mistakes because they contribute to inequality between men and women. More and more Americans have started realizing the need to respect equality and diversity through social media for all the people in the society.

Conclusion

American culture is huge in nature and all-encompassing. American culture has got used to using social media throughout the past decade as a popular mode of information and communication. In the quote stated by Brian Williams ''Enough About You'', he believes that the desire for individuals to celebrate their self has motivated American Culture which he further explains as a generation that is User-Generated. There are various faces of the modern culture found in America but the internet is the most dominating cultural artefact that exists. Several American cultural values have been revealed through the use of the internet and social media such as equality, privacy, individuality, virtual interaction and diversity acceptance. The effect of social media analysis as a cultural artifact shows the increase of global communication which is a positive impact that is before citing the change in society.

Our society is the global network and its logical understanding of organization and interaction between culture, and technology in the development and formation of technological and social networks which is the twenty-first-century research key field. We can gain more understanding and make progress by putting a lot of effort into scholarly research. This will then bring a deeper understanding of the myths that surround the current technology. For young people, digital communication technology has become a second skin to them while on the other side it continues to feed the fantasies and fears of those that are in charge of society. Change is inevitable, the society should take responsibility to make sure that the usage of social media and its impacts is well understood and evaluated with all what is happening all over the world.

Bibliography

Kim, Yoojung, Dongyoung Sohn, and Sejung Marina Choi. "Cultural difference in motivations for using social network sites: A comparative study of American and Korean college students." Computers in human behavior 27, no. 1 (2011): 365-372.

Mok, Aurelia, Michael W. Morris, Veronica Benet-Martinez, and Zahide Karakitapoglu-Aygun. "Embracing American culture: Structures of social identity and social networks among first-generation biculturals." Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 38, no. 5 (2007): 629-635.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. "Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship." Journal of computermediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007): 210-230.

Al-Kandari, Ali AJ. "Arab news networks and conspiracy theories about America: A political gratification study." Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 3, no. 1-2 (2010): 59-76.

Harlow, Summer. "Social media and social movements: Facebook and an online Guatemalan justice movement that moved offline." New Media & Society 14, no. 2 (2012): 225-243.

Levine, Debra Siegel, Robert Joseph Taylor, Ann W. Nguyen, Linda M. Chatters, and Joseph A. Himle. "Family and friendship informal support networks and social anxiety disorder among African Americans and Black Caribbeans." Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology 50, no. 7 (2015): 1121-1133.

Davis, Stefanie E. "Objectification, Sexualization, and Misrepresentation: Social Media and the College Experience." Social Media+ Society 4, no. 3 (2018): 2056305118786727.