Introduction
Social media, which describes a number of internet websites, platforms, and applications that foster online communication, emerged in the late 20th to early 21st century and has since grown rapidly in the developed world. The websites or applications for these platforms are typically user-generated and designed to facilitate community interaction based on common interests and goals. For example, Facebook, the most popular social media website worldwide, was initially designed to help individuals at Harvard University connect with other students, faculty, and staff. Today, there is a significant 'Facebook culture' and a new term, 'Facebook official,' that describes individuals who reveal official, personal, or important news by 'Facebooking' it. Another popular social media website is Twitter, which allows individuals to upload SMS messages ('tweets') limited to 140 characters or less.
What makes social media platforms different from social media imaging websites is the interactive quality of the communication and content posting and updating. For example, Facebook allows individuals to 'like' comments and photos as well as place their own comments and photos. Instagram, on the other hand, is mostly static content posting of personal or commercial-quality photos and videos, and discussions typically occur outside the primary website. Facebook has over 1.2 billion active users who generate over three billion 'likes' per day and 300 million photographs per day. Twitter generates over 400 million tweets and over 13 million video uploads a day. In short, as the medium used to communicate thoughts, actions, needs, ideas, relationships, desires, and problems, social media is becoming more pervasive and changing daily life. Although questionably valid, reports indicate that 73% of online adults use a social networking platform of some kind.
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Positive Effects of Social Media
The obvious first point pertaining to the positive aspects of social media is that it furthers the idea of connectivity. Social networks connect people from different areas of the world, which fosters the feeling of oneness and harmony. This, in turn, leads to less discrimination and prejudice in society. Hence, the world becomes a more integrated place. Not only does it foster communication, but it also acts as a form of information bulletin. Social networking is the perfect way to launch good news, social issues, movements, social causes, advertisements, and the like. It also increases participation as a result of a greater level of influence. This promotes a sense of achievement and social involvement, in turn, narrowing goodwill to people.
Social networks, specifically Instagram, are treasuries of ideas. It is one of the fastest ways to seek knowledge on anything and everything. This is what has led to the popularization of online businesses. This not only helps in attaining personal benefits but also brings about aid for others. LinkedIn is one of the most used sites for professional purposes. It is a networking and job-seeking site that allows us to make viable options or expand our professional database. The internet contains a great deal of information that is very easy to access. It thus aids the process of learning by allowing us to consult different types of references and resources, both educational and non-educational. Social networks are an inexpensive training and workshop tool. They can be a means of interaction for students with similar interests at a university.
Negative Effects of Social Media
While there are many positive aspects to social media, such as facilitating connections and providing unique opportunities to find jobs, sell products, and gain traction as influencers and small business owners, there is a laundry list of negative effects that need to be acknowledged and taken seriously. Social media has well-documented mental health impacts. It increases anxiety by making individuals feel like they are missing out on experiences. It also serves as a platform for cyberbullying, which can cause depression and frequently leads to suicide among children, teenagers, and adults. Social media has a competently named evil twin called "social comparison," which leads users to compare themselves against others. Although a majority of the content posted on social media is unrealistic or fake, many people compare their actual, real-time experiences and bodies to the hyper-curated portrayals that flood their feeds. This often results in increased insecurity, body image issues, and jealousy. Privacy is another major issue associated with social media. Many people disclose personal details on social media platforms, including their full name and birthday. This information is highly lucrative to businesses, as it can be used to create targeted advertisements or even be sold to the highest bidder. Cyber criminals can also use this information to take out loans in unwitting individuals' names or, worse, steal their identity.
Social media is addictive, which is perhaps why many users are unaware of the impacts listed above, frequently blindsided by the addiction's productivity and real-life relationship effects. Furthermore, extensive time spent on these apps acts as both a catalyst for pre-existing symptoms of stress and depression, reducing the likelihood of recovery and spiking the risk of suicide. The spread of misinformation has gone so far on social media platforms that lives are now at stake. In particular, the widely accepted vaccine is not so widely accepted in a number of regions that owe their skepticism to propaganda. Overall, while there are many aspects of social media that need to be acknowledged and praised, their far-reaching negative impact cannot and must not be overlooked.
Social Media and Politics
Social media has, since its inception, had an increasing role in politics. The 2008 election of President Obama was the first presidential campaign to use large-scale, professional use of social media, and several subsequent presidential campaigns and political movements have already been mentioned as the first to use Twitter in their successful campaigns, including the 2010 victory of the Tea Party movement in the US, which used social technologies to create a social media-driven "Groundswell". More recently, in the 2018 midterm elections, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously used Instagram to get viewers on her social media talk. Social media was for the first time taking on a major role in a democracy's governance, but did it have any lasting effect on the political processes in the US? Social media is used for negative activities, including collaborating on executing and planning terrorism; social media can be used to incite violence and give protesters a "voice".
These new and real-time technologies have allowed politicians to short-circuit traditional media and speak directly to the public. Politicians can now bypass the reporting and opinion-making machinery in the process of getting their message out. Some American politicians and activists are also using these tools to organize. The most famous example is the US Tea Party and several religious groups. Political actors can use social media to spread their message and organize collective action. The ability to get more friends can also have a political dimension. Both the Tea Party and President Obama's presidential campaign have been seen as a part of a social movement, interestingly so. As intended, both have been seen as a bottom-up social movement constituting a large, political-based internet "word-of-mouth". Some large social movements have become influential political parties; for example, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the peaceful protests. Social media users can use the website to provide information about themselves, but also about the date, time, and location of the protest. Even individual protests are turned into large-scale protests.
Future Trends and Implications
While current social media platforms are yet to expand their business models to incorporate data science and AI for the prediction of future user content, this is happening in practice in other application areas. Very often, data analysts, social media advertisers, and public health campaigners will exploit the insights from social media data to model future behavior. There is every indication that this will be a feature of future social media, possibly 'dashboard' style apps which provide actionable user advice from sophisticated prediction engines. The ability to create interest, engagement, and content will still be crucial for digital influencers, but society is seeing a lift in content created by AI 'writers' and 'commentators', especially in application areas such as financial analysis, sports writing, and weather reporting. One future trend that will probably impact the social media ecosystem, especially in the realm of online gaming, is the technology of augmented reality, in which the real-world environment is complemented with the generation of natural or computer-generated perceptual information to build a digital world. In the context of gaming, the interactive experiences of gamers are already closely interwoven with social media. The growing convergence of augmented reality gaming and social media platforms offers new ways for people to connect, plus new types of data to be leveraged in order to provide advanced forms of digital advertising that create socially driven commercial developments. It is clear that speed is making a large impact on how society becomes involved with online and offline activities and, in turn, how social media companies evolve to engage with their customers. The influence and importance of online media are not likely to diminish, coining the term 'participatory digital culture'.
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