Social media is one of the few things that we cannot avoid in this era. It can be considered as one of the best things that ever happened to the Internet. On the other hand, social media has a lot of disadvantages as well. Like most of the things out there, while providing a lot of useful things on one side, social media is not completely good in every aspect. In this article, we are going to check the advantages and disadvantages of social media.
Advantages of Social Media
- A platform to connect: Social media provided a huge platform for people to find each other and connect with them. This opened a wide variety of opportunities for a lot of people. If you just want to make some friends or to participate in social activities, find a job, or even buy stuff, social media can help you do any of that.
- Stay informed: Before social media, it was very difficult to keep track of the happenings in the world. Even though there were communication channels such as radio, TV, etc. They were not that effective as social media is today in keeping people informed about the outer world.
- An opportunity for businesses: Social media as we all know, is a huge network of billions of people all around the globe. That means it is a huge platform where new businesses can find customers and sell their products. The platforms such as the Facebook marketplace not only let the businesses sell their products but also lets the users easily find the products they want.
- Get recognized: It wasn’t so easy for artists or people with any kind of talent to get recognition in the old days. Now it is a matter of taking a video and posting it online. If you are talented enough and have a bit of luck, your chances of accomplishing your dreams are pretty high. According to the surveys, around 68% of the adults in the entire world uses Facebook. So it is hard to miss not being noticed by anyone of them.
- Find jobs: You can use social media as a platform to find jobs. Many companies post job openings on their social media profiles which users can browse through and apply. In addition, social media networks such as LinkedIn has a huge user base that allows anyone to connect with people from different companies and find their dream job. In most cases, you won’t even have to apply for any jobs. All you have to do is updating your profile with a robust resume. If it is attractive enough, chances are that someone is going to reach you out and ask if you are interested in any jobs.
Disadvantages of Social Media
- Addiction: Too much is bad. The sentence also applies to social media. Social media addiction can turn out pretty bad. It will not only affect your physical health but can also impact your mental well-being. Spending hours on social media chatting, playing online games, posting to groups, etc. can adversely affect your life. So always be sure to use it for good, and as soon as you’re done with it, concentrate on other activities.
- Health problems: As already mentioned, the over usage of social media like anything else for a long period of time without any break can cause health problems such as eye strain, back pain, obesity, etc. So always make sure that the usage of social media is not affecting your health badly.
- Reducing productivity: As we all know, social media is filled with a lot of fun videos, photos, games, and a lot more things that can keep you engaged for a long period of time. It is a good thing to spend time on them during your relaxing time, but it is not the case always. Especially, for those who work, browsing social media in between can impact productivity at a huge scale. Just visiting the social media sites for checking a simple message can turn out spending hours on it browsing through the content.
- Scams: Scamming cannot be attributed to social media alone. But social media is no exception. Scammers always find a way to reach you out. Social media makes it much easier for them. As most of the social media networks such as Facebook force uses to maintain a real account and it terminates any fake accounts, it is much easier for the scammers to get your real identity and exploit you. Apart from that, they can also find your interests from your posts on social media making it much easier for them to make you fall for the scam.
- Privacy: There has been a lot of reports and concerns regarding the privacy of users on social media platforms such as Facebook. Even the social media accounts themselves use the user data to advertise products and services that match the interest of the user. These social media giants also got multiple lawsuits in the past years regarding user privacy issues.
Like anything, if used on a moderate level without spending too much time on it, Social media can do wonders. If used otherwise, it can bring you away from the real world. If you work on social media such as on jobs like social media marketing or something, it is impossible to get rid of it. Except for such scenarios, make sure that you take a good amount of break from it. Hope you got a good understanding of the pros and cons of social media services from this article. Let us know your thoughts. You may be also interested in checking out our article on the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook.