Tiffani Polovino
Comp 106
Professor Darling
April 3, 2016
Social Media: The Good vs. The Bad
There is a revolution happening every day in the world. When new things present themselves to the world and endanger our style of living, it can have good affects, or it can have bad affects. There is nothing new that is perfect. The greatest revolution that we are currently living in now is that of social media. It engulfs everyone into its vast addiction. When something happens, they make a status. When breaking news happens, they get on Facebook then0 look for it and share it. When everyone is out and about in their daily routines, you can see most of them with their faces in their phones. Whether it be to keep up with family, look at the news around the world, or even just watching fun videos. Has social media become a huge part of everyone’s lives? Yes, it has. The real question is, is social media good, or is it bad?
One thing often seen on the news, or on social media itself, is how Facebook or some other source of media helped someone find an object that they have lost. Samantha Laine wrote an article about how someone lost their ring, a family heirloom. They tried everything to get it back, but no luck. As a last result, they turned to Facebook and posted a picture of the ring, pleading for it to be found. The post read, “I know it’s a long shot, but please repost this: I lost my wedding ring in Bricktown celebrating my coach’s birthday. This ring is priceless and irreplaceable. Its custom made and the diamond was from hubby’s father, who passed on when he was 10yo. In losing the ring, I’ve lost a piece of his father. Please contact me if you or anyone you know finds it.” The picture got over 3,000 shares! Thanks to the shares, the ring found its way back to the rightful owner. This is one of the great things about social media. Everyone gets on it, and everyone shares what they see. When I get on Facebook, I often find post about missing or found items, all trying to get back to owners. I look at the comments and it amazes me how many people share, like, and comment on the post, eventually until the right person is found. This is a way that social media is amazing. Millions of users get on every day and share many things, sometimes, it just may be a huge help to someone else.
Besides finding lost items, social media has also helped many people find long lost family members. In an article posted in the Daily Beast by author Nina Strochlic, she shares a very special story about a lady that was adopted, and after 44 years found her birth mother because of Facebook. When she found out she was adopted, she knew she wanted to find her birth family. She tried for years, even hiring multiple private investigators. ““It was one dead end after another,” she says.” Finally, she decided to turn to social media. After making a page, the daughters picture was shared over 1,000 times within 48 hours. After two days, she was contacted by a family member, who later turned out to be her cousin. After this, the birth mother was found. Turns out, she was looking too. What’s funny is that she tried for years to find her birth mother, and once she took to social media, it only took a two days to find her. Finding family members or old friends has been made so much easier because of the various types of social media. I know many people, including myself, that have found their childhood best friends that they haven’t seen in years on Facebook. Although there are millions of users that log in and make accounts each day, Facebook is still a very helpful aid in finding almost anyone, as long as they have an account of course. This is another example that sheds a light on how great social media can be.
For me, finding lost things or family members is great, but the one thing I love most about social media is how it keeps you in touch with family and friends. All through middle school and high school, I had an amazing group of friends, and we did everything together. We would spend every weekend together and had so many good times. When our senior year hit and we all started looking at colleges, we knew we would be split up. Once we graduated, all six of us went to different schools, all multiple hours away. We were worried our friendship would be lost, but because of social media, that didn’t happen. On Facebook, we have a group chat that has been going strong for many years. On twitter, we are able to keep up with what was happening in each other’s lives and retweet tweets that remind us of one another. On Instagram we are able to see pictures of what we are all doing and see how happy we all are. On snapchat we are able to send quick messages with hilarious filters to make one another smile when needed. If it weren’t for social media would we still be in touch like we are now? An article that appeared in The Atlantic, written by Zeynap Tufecki, stated that, “texting, Facebook-status updates, and Twitter conversations are not displacing face-to-face socializing — on average, they are making them stronger. Social media is enhancing human connectivity as people can converse in ways that were once not possible.” Many people have family spread all over the country. They may have new cousins or nieces or nephews that they don’t get to see. With social media, they can stay in the lives of that child growing up. Social media does a great job of keeping friends and relatives close.
Another reason social media is such a revolution is because of the activism it helps promote. In his book Tweets and the Streets, Paolo Gerbaudo speaks another great use of social media. This use he talks about is that of the hashtag. It seems so simple, how could it be helpful? The thing is, the hashtag isn’t just a pound sign followed by words, it is a link you can click on and see what other people have to say about that subject. You can get in on the conversation by also using the hashtag. In the book, the hashtag that is used as an example is the legendary #OcccupyWallStreet. This hashtag was used while protests were being held on Wall Street. The thing about the hashtag is that it helped activist supporting the cause be a part of the protest from their own homes. “The Twitter streams helped in maintaining a sense of solidarity between ‘physical occupiers’ and ‘internet occupiers’” (Gerbaudo, 124). Main camp was set up in Zuccotti Park, and with the help of the hashtag, they never had to give up their post. They used the hashtag to let followers know of their needs. If it was raining, they asked for umbrellas and got them. If they were hungry, pizza was brought to the park for all. The hashtag helped everyone around the country keep up with what was happening and made them feel a part of the movement.
Many more instances like this have been seen. The most popular one today is #BlackLivesMatter. Many users on social media have been posting about this to raise awareness of police brutality against black people. Even big celebrities like Beyoncé have raised awareness of the cause. With her new song “Formation”, Beyoncé kept the hashtag alive and took a huge step forward with it in her music video and Super Bowl Performance. Although both of these happened months ago, they are still pretty high on the talk of social media and the news because of hashtags. Thanks to hashtags, everyone is able to keep up with big protests and all other big events happening in the world.
Although there is all this evidence of social media being good in people’s lives and very helpful, other see the bad that it brings to lives. One of the biggest concerns for adults is that social media is a huge distraction in the classroom. Now, kids starting as young as eight years old have smart phones or tablets. With those devices they have access to social media. In the classroom, almost every student has access to their social media accounts. Social media can basically take over the minds of students as they are fully absorbed into what is going on with all their friends. They would rather know what their close friend did the night before than learn the new chapter in psychology or study for their upcoming biology test. Teachers all over, from middle school up through college, struggle with this problem. If social media didn’t exist, would test scores and overall grade be higher for students? That is only something we could wonder. This is something that blogger Jasmine Paton feels strongly about, in her blog she talks about how social media can be distracting anywhere, but is especially a problem in schools all over the country. “Students are religiously connecting themselves to it and are continuously signing online to check their status,” Paton states, “Even while in class, students are on their laptops or smartphone and spend the majority of their time checking their ‘home page’ and only partially listening to their teacher’s lecture.” With students being more worried about the happenings online, it is affecting their ability to absorb new information. While the teacher is going on about the Civil War, they are looking at funny pictures of dogs that their friend has shared. This is one major problem with social media, and Paton thinks that, “Students need to start making big decisions and start changing their habits and becoming less distracted by social media networks.”
Besides being distracted in their classes, students find yet more ways to make bad use of social media. One issue that is seen all over the country and we run into problems with constantly is cyberbullying. With the internet, students no longer need to meet face to face to bully someone else, they can just tweet mean things, post on someone’s wall, or even start a bad rumor, and all of this this by the click of a button. Before social media, kids could only bully in person with the chance of a teacher or other student noticing and stepping in to stop it. Now, it happens at home through a computer. There is no adult to step in and stop it. All there is bystanders watching post after post. Some of these cyberbullies lead to horrible things. Cyberbullying is actually one thing linked to a spike in depression for teens. In an article written in the Washington Post by author Donna St. George she talked about the depression linked to cyberbullying. One thing about cyberbully, as said by Heather Applegate, a supervisor at Loudoun County public schools, is that “you can’t get away from it. In order to get away, you have to stop using social networking or stop using your cellphone.” It is not so easy to give up your social media or phone though, because in the world today, everyone has to have those two things. Because cyber bullying is linked to depression in some cases, many victims have gone to drastic measures to take care of the pain they have felt. Suicide as a result of cyberbullying is a problem that not only America, but the entire world faces. Cyberbullying is by far the greatest downfall from social media.
Not only is social media used for bullying other students, but also used to bash and embarrass teachers. In an article about cyberbullying, author Meg Hazel brings this to the surface. Everyone notices students being bullied, but never really pay attention to what the kids are posting about their teachers. Hazel brings up a few examples of when teachers were the targets of online bullying. One teacher was the subject of a YouTube slideshow. The slideshow depicted the teacher being killed and after seeing the video, the teacher was so upset that “she became ill and lost sleep.” The court saw this as a distraction to the learning environment and action was taken. Not all cases of teachers being the subject of harassment are taken care of, because they are not seen as a big threat. Even though action is not taken in a lot of situations, it is still a major issue that is going on in schools.
Another type of cyber bullying that can be seen on social media is that of celebrity bashing. This is when social media users focus on little changes in a celebrities’ life that make them look a little bad and make it a huge deal. Memes of celebrities of often created, frowning upon the ugly outfit one actress wore, or the little extra wait an actor put on, and maybe even the ugly picture that was captured of a musician while performing. From personal experience, I notice this all the time. Anytime I get online just to see what some of my friends are up to, I first happen upon multiple pictures comparing Taylor Lautner three years ago to Taylor Lautner now, making fun of the weight he gained over the years. Celebrities enjoy using social media to stay in touch with their fans, but when all people want to do is dwell on the littlest thing they can find bad about someone famous, why would they want to have accounts. This is one of the big problems that we have because of social media. Yes, before (and still currently), they had tabloids, and they bashed celebrities using that, but the tabloids were only available for a limited amount of time. On social media, these embarrassing pictures are constantly being shared, and can still pop up on the recent news feed six months down the road.
The last thing that is a bad side effect of social media is addiction. In the New York Times, a journalist wrote about this addiction. Author Tony Schwartz wrote about how distracting social media can be and his experience trying to give up his social media addiction. He wrote that “According to one recent survey, the average white-collar worker spends about six hours a day on email. That doesn’t count time online spent shopping, searching or keeping up with social media.” This just gives a little insight on how much people rely on social media and use it throughout their daily lives. Schwartz then decided to try something. He decided to try giving up social media and all unhealthy habits (drinking pop and alcohol and snacking on junk foods) for thirty days. What surprised him was that he found it easier to give up all his bad eating habits rather than social media. He explains that before his addiction, he was eating healthy and exercising regularly, but once he started going online all the time, he just seemed to be too distracted. This article shows us how social media affected the writer’s life negatively, but I am sure that many others were affected in the same way. You always see people with their faces glued to their phones, and not noticing all the things going on in their environment around them. Before, friends would go out and actually interact, now when you see people together, it is just them sitting by each other while on their phones checking all of the latest gossip. Social media is becoming a huge distraction in all instances. It distracts people from seeing the bigger picture and appreciating the world around them, and that is sad. Social media is a huge distraction, and many people just let it take over their lives for one simple reason, and that is because they are addicted. Every time I go out to eat with my boyfriend, I get on my cell phone looking on Twitter and Instagram, and every time, my boyfriend tells me how much he hates cell phones. We have a rule now, that when we are at a restaurant, all phones have to be put away. You never realize the fun and conversation you are missing out on. Too many people let social media consume them, and they miss out on what is going on in the world.
With new revolutions come new arguments and opposing views. Social media has raised many arguments from two sides. Some think social media is a great new step into the future, and others think that it is taking away from some people’s lives. It can be seen as a great way of communication and staying in touch with others, or it can be seen as the reason students aren’t doing too well in school, or why some others are becoming more depressed. There are many more reasons for why social media could be good or bad. In the end, the thoughts just come down to the opinion of each individual. In my opinion, social media is too much of a distraction. Yes, I use it every single day, I will admit that, but it has too many negative sides of it. I hate going out with friends or just hanging out at my house in silence because everyone is on their phones. I hate walking through campus and almost getting run into multiple times because people can’t look up from their phone for two seconds to look where they are walking. I hate that when I get bored in some classes I take my phone out and see what everyone else is up to, because that distracts me from learning. I feel like I would be lost without social media, but I would get to experience so much more and it would be better for myself and others in the long run. Some don’t realize the negativity social media can bring, and are blind to all that is going on around them because there are too involved with how “amazing” social media is. We all should really consider the pros and the cons of social media because of one simple fact, it could easily change the way we live life forever. So what is it? Is social media good? Or is it bad? That is just up to you to decide.
Social Media: Good or Bad? 