Social Media Possess their Positive and Negative Consequences

The Two Sides of Social Media

Social media have injected their way into people’s life spontaneously. A survey conducted by Pew Research has shown that about 77% of Americans owns smartphone and 7 in 10 of them admitted using multiple media platforms (Smith). The impact of this powerful tool to the youth is undeniable. Frank to say, social media have become unseparated from the process of developing self-identity as well as reinforcing one’s relationship with society and with each other. Similar to medicine that has side effects, social media possess their positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, this communication tool makes available numerous opportunities from networking to personal branding. On the other hand, it exposes people to a tremendous amount of information that causes many issues such as invasion of privacy to identity crisis, especially for the youth (Furedi).

In general, social media surround topic of identity. Currently, Facebook is one of the most popular sites with 68% of 18- to 24-year-olds Americans users following with Instagram (35%), Snapchat (27%), Linkedln (25%) and Twitter (24%), respectively (Smith and Anderson). All of these apps encourage members to displace their personal information from name, gender, location to employment status. An example of this requirement can be addressed by “Facebook real-name policy” which asks for physical proofs like driver license or student ID if authentic name is suspected (Facebook.com). Under the innocent purpose of eliminating fake accounts, this policy further emphasizes how social media are pushing their users to a hyper-transparency culture. As a result, online and offline life are pulled closer together: an interaction on the Internet is a reflect from real world situation.

Because the world is becoming more connected than ever, social relationships are getting easier to create as well as maintain. No longer the time people have to be in the same demographic to keep a relationship on track, communication tools can take care of that obstacle. Statistic from Pew Research demonstrates that 41% of 18- to 29-year-old admit feeling closer to their partners because of daily interaction on social media (Lenhart and Duggan). More impressively, 94% of teenagers spend most of their communication with friends on some forms of social sites (Anderson, Monica, and Jingjing Jiang). The active sharing of opinions and personal experiences on social media keep people in touch informatively and emotionally. Exchanging usernames between new friends has become a traditional etiquette among digital natives (Anderson, Monica, and Jingjing Jiang). Social media also touch their magic wand on professional life. In 2015, in the article “How to separate the personal and professional on social media,” Ollier-Malaterre and Rothbard reported: “40% to 60% of hiring managers use social media to screen potential hires…” This type of self-presentation is the main purpose of Linkedin, a site for employment networking (Linkedin.com). By displacing professional resumes as profile, members of Linkedin are exposed to various working opportunities as well as chances to build valuable connections. With the right use, social media strengthens our relationship both personally and professionally.

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