Friday, December 17, 2010

Social Media

There are many good things that have come from social media, but there are also lots of bad
things that come from it also. Social media has expanded to many different types of media and plenty of
different groups.

One of the good things that has come from social media is the exponential increase in
connectivity. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, there is some way of communicating with
who you need to. Unless of course you have no service or internet. But having no internet or service is
almost impossible now that the phone and internet networks have become the norm in just about every
business that you walk past. Just try to find a WiFi network while you are walking down the street some
day and you will see that there are probably five to ten networks already in reach of you. If you are on
the road and you suddenly remember that you forgot to look up what homework you had, you simply
pull out your wireless device and push the Facebook button and you are instantly connected to a bunch
of students that are there to answer your homework questions.

One of the bad things about social media is the decrease in face to face social interaction. There
are many useful types of social media that involve face time, but these are still not perfect and it is
definitely not the primary type of media. Anytime you type or say something online there is always the
chance that it will be interpreted wrong, or misunderstood the way that it would be otherwise if you
were face to face. There is also that time where you get to think about exactly what you want to say
before you say it which you don’t get to do when having a face to face conversation.

Another one of the bad things about social media is the anonymousness of the internet. One of
the dumbest things on the internet is Formspring. They honestly should change the name of the website
to Cyber bully me please.com with a subtitle or occasionally brown nose. It is an anonymous website
where anyone can type anything that they want to say to you and be completely anonymous. A lot of the
time it’s just a bunch of people posting mean things that they want to say to you anonymously, or they
just like to be assholes. There is rarely a time where someone actually in nice to you.

Another one of the good things about social media is the ability to transfer what you’re doing on
the internet into real life. There are so many times when you can talk to someone on a social media site
as an icebreaker or just a continuation of a conversation before. Any time that someone would want to
have a party or get-together there is a way that they could get to everyone that they want to come
without calling on the phone. This is really good for me, because I hate talking on the phone unless it’s
with one of my really close friends.

Of course with all technology there comes responsibility, so good or bad, use social media wisely.

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