Social Media? More like Social Me-Yeah!

Someone (probably my parents) said, “Everything in the entire world has a good and bad aspect. There’s nothing that will not have a good aspect (except Donald Trump) or vice versa.” This statement holds true for most of the things, especially debatable topics like social media.

For everyone at first, social media was (literally) a foreign concept. My entire life exposed on the internet? No way, you say. As reasonable as feeling scared about exposing what you’re doing, where you’re travelling to and what you’re eating on social media also helps bring everyone in your life, closer. Your office friends know your college friends, you know your friend’s work friends and thus, instead of it being five different circles, it is a huge circle.

Man is a social animal. Everyone needs someone and social media provides exactly that. Micro-blogging websites like Tumblr has brought together similar minded people, people with similar issues and problems from all over the world on one platform, which is amazing. Not only do people have someone they can talk to, they also have people who can empathise with almost everything they go through. They act as a therapy session. 

It has obviously made the world a smaller place. You’re more in touch with your relatives (seems like a disadvantage, but shout out to the cool aunt), your friends who have gone abroad or if you’ve gone abroad or if you both have gone abroad to different places. They seem closer than they are.

Social media keeps you in touch with the entire world. You log into twitter, see what is trending and you instantly know about it. Who needs news when you have the top trends? You know what is happening in Africa by just following a person who actively tweets or updates his status on Facebook regarding the situation there.

Digital foot printing has allowed people to keep their original content safe on all the social media websites and thus cases plagiarism have been easier to solve. Social media is also a very helpful platform for businesses as advertising has been much easier. Since everyone is addicted to the social media websites, products easily gain attention by eager customers.

Social media has also broadened many people’s horizons and have opened their minds to various new cultures and different ideologies. It has removed any barriers there were between interaction and communications.

Online petitions promoted by social media networks have also promoted change in the society. For example, in 2012,a  teenage girl started a petition on change.org to stop photo-shopping models in magazines. Soon, Seventeen, a mainstream teenage magazine announced (after she collected 10,000 signatures) that they will not Photoshop their models.

Aside from these fabulous boons, there are also banes that most people focus on. Not that they should be completely ignored, but people tend to overhype the negative aspects more. There are two types of people on the internet: one, who judge themselves based on the likes their posts get and two, who lie. This attitude affects a lot of people and they start judging themselves more which is a negative aspect of social media. 

Regardless the bans, people are going to use, love, get addicted to social media any which ways. What the haters fail to understand is that if social media didn’t exist though, where would they show case their ‘oh my life rocks and yours sucks’ attitude?


Written by Durva Bhatt
A bibliophile who is fuelled entirely by caffeine, sarcasm, fandoms and random thoughts.