Two sides of Social Media Effects

Social media is a technology that connects people by allowing quick communication without meeting. It is an important tool especially in businesses but it has some negative impacts.

Social media negatively affects society in areas such as elections, the economy, and health. During campaigns, information sharing is done through social media such as Facebook, Twitter among others. Social media may determine the results by choosing which candidate to cover most, cover less, or not to cover. This information reaches many people and may have large effects on the voter’s perceptions during campaigns. This depends on the information given for a candidate mostly it’s incorrect. This creates recognition which is the biggest tool that drives election hence determining the candidate to fill the position.

Broad contents are published on social media platforms mostly increase the cost especially transaction cost for research hence distrusting the economy’s growth. Also, the use of social media negatively affects the economy when People spend most of their working time. This may affect productivity because people substitute labor for leisure. Additionally, social media have consequences on people’s health especially young people who mostly spend most of their time on it. A human being is a social being and he or she feels comfortable in physical conversations with people who care about them. The more one uses this technology increases the chances of developing mood disorders such as anxiety and depression hence affecting their health

Therefore, Social media has great importance in today’s world and so should be well implemented to avoid negative effects. This is by ensuring limited time is spent on media and using the technology when it is necessary.

References

Bradshaw, S., & Howard, P. N. (2018). Challenging truth and trust: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation. The Computational Propaganda Project, 1. https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2018/07/ct2018.pdf

Kelly, Y., Zilanawala, A., Booker, C., & Sacker, A. (2018). Social media use and adolescent mental health: Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. EClinicalMedicine, 6, 59–68. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537018300609