Steemit Engagement Challenge Season 8 Week 1 - "The Power of Social Media"

Hi, This is Asad Fazal from Pakistan. I hope everyone here in this wonderful community is doing well. Today is my first post in "Steem Philippines" and I am taking part in the Engagement Challenge Week 1. The topic decided by the team is very interesting that is "The Power of Social Media". The reason why it is important and exciting because we use social media almost half time of our day. Now without further ado, lets start!

I don't remember exactly at which date I started social media but I think after Matriculation studies I got mobile and first thing was Facebook that I use. In start, I was not aware of it that much but as I was a computer user since my 7th class, I understand Facebook as well in few days.

I created my first social media account without anyone's help because the steps were very clear given by facebook itself. I followed the steps by creating gmail account and then signup on facebook. After that I install Instagram also but around one and a half or 2 years later.

Honestly speaking, when I created my account on Facebook, I didn't tell in my house because I was afraid that my elder brother and mother will scold me for this. But as I started using it, I enjoyed it because most of my friends were there. I use it in every time I got after studies and college.

My experience till now is good but I have wasted a lot of my time on social media. If I talk about current time, I am using social media for more than 4 hours a day and I don't think so it is good investment of my life. Still it is like an addiction that is really hard to leave and I am also not able to leave it. I tried to use social media accounts less but after 2-3 days I again start using it same like 4-5 hours or more a day.

I know everybody will have different opinion on it. But personally I think social media accounts should be used by people over 18 years age. There are many benefits of using it but it has more harms than benefits so my opinion is people over 18 years age are good to have access to social media platforms.

In current time, parents are not that much taking care of their children and their children are making social media accounts at 12-13 years of age. This is not a good thing and will only harm current and next generations. In my opinion, social media accounts creation should be in parents hand and if they feel their children are ready to get into social world then they should allow them otherwise keep them away.

We all know the harms social media have and it is not always good to discuss everything that is already in the mind of people. But the main harm I personally experience is time waste. However, in my opinion, 18 years is good age and parents must be in charge of creation of account whenever they think is right.

If a user is no longer using his social media accounts due to some personal issues or he/she is too much busy that he has no time not even a minute to check social media accounts, he must take some steps to protect his/her data because data is very important now-a-days. These steps are:

1. Either delete or deactivate his account so that no hacking can be done on his account. No authorized access can be given to his account and his data will be safe.


2. If someone managing account than he must monitor carefully his account regularly. Because in these days, we can't trust anyone not even our friends except dear family members.


3. Download copy of your data from all social media accounts and keep them in safe place.


4. If unauthorize used, then he must report the issue to the social media team and tell them everything. They will surely help you in gaining access and will remove any malicious activity happening on your account.

These are some of the tips or steps one must follow if he is no longer using his account or his account is being managed by some other person for sometime. I suggest that we must not give our account to any person except our family because of trust issue.

The best thing one can do to his social media accounts is effective use that will not waste his/her time. Using social media properly is a challenge task and not all can do it. But still I will share some ideas or tips that will help you properly manage your accounts.

1. Purpose of use: First tip to know what is your purpose of using social media. If you have no purpose and just for fun then you are wasting your time. If you have purpose then you must be getting knowledge from it. The tip here is to use social media to get customers, business improvement, knowledge, and friendship with good people that supports you.


2. Setting Goals: Second tip or idea is to set your goals of using social media accounts. If you are business owner, spread your business awareness there. If you are a social media marketer, tell people you can get them leads or sales using your skills. Set your goals in using social media.


3. Create Quality Content: Not just make funny posts but instead create quality engaging content so people will know you more. You can also make entertainment content but it should be engaging.


4. Interact with Others: It is good thing to do on social media is to engage with others through comments and replies. Making new like minded friends is easy now just by interacting with them regularly.


5. Monitor your Activities: Regularly monitor your time spent and activities performed on social media accounts. Are you doing good things or just wasting time like before.

These are some of the ideas or tips that I want to add. Not only Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms, but you can apply these tips on Steemit as well. Steemit is not a simple platform but it is a whole social media platform with various features and benefits. So use it well.

We all must admit that social media is used very carelessly specially by young generation. People love to spend time there but actually they are wasting their precious time that they can spend with family and friends. Mostly the study has been affected with social media as students' main goal is to get into relationship through social media platforms.

However, social media is a powerful technology which has many benefits also if used properly. In my opinion, the future of social media will be useful just like today but it will have harms also just like now have. I think nothing will more change except ease for user. The interface and new features will be available on social media.

Yes it is a powerful technology that connects people around the world and will do in the future as well. It also helps to solve important tasks and without even mobile we can chat with friends on our laptop if we have internet and social media accounts. People do huge businesses through these platforms and I think most of the businesses will be shifted completly to the internet with no physical shop. So yes social media has a bright future if used properly and if not it will harm our next generation.

As I said above, there are many benefits and harms of social media usage. Let discuss them in details one by one:

1. Connectivity: The first advantage is connectivity that means it connects people from around the world. No matter where you are and where you loved one is, you can easily connect with them.


2. Education: Through social media education and awareness spreads. Before it, people were not able to know what is happening in the world except from news but news were not authenticate source. But now everything can be seen through social media even education can be get through it.


3. Information sharing: The best benefit is sharing of information from around the world. Without any delay, a person, brand, business, company or an organization can share information without a second delay. They just need to post content and it will be available to their followers and other people's feed.

1. False idea of friendship: Friends we make through social media are not exactly like in reality than that they show on social platforms. On social media, everyone wants to be perfect and they usually show their best face there but not the real one.


2. Addiction: The more you use social media, the more you will be addicted to it. It is like a drug addiction that is really hard to leave. We can make less use of it but not possible now to leave it completely.


3. More Depression: Due to false idea of friendship and looking at other people's lifestyle, one can easily go in depression and anxiety level can easily increase.


4. False information: It is also possible that there are misinformation on the social media platforms. Everyone can share post without authentication, so there you can see false information or less information.

There are various social media platforms working worldwide and in my country Pakistan, many are available for the public. Among them the most famous ones are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, SnackVideo, and LinkedIn. If we talk about chatting app then Snapchat is very famous here since 2020.

Almost 80% of Pakistan's youth has Facebook account and Instagram has more than 15.6 million users just from Pakistan. The Tiktok platform is being used by 18.3 Million Pakistani users and Snackvideo has 20 million Pakistani users. So you can see how popular these social platforms are in Pakistan.

Also there are millions of users for YouTube but it is not just a social media platform but it is a video search engine platform that has billions of users from around the world. In combine, if we see the above mentioned social media platforms has more than 100 million users from Pakistan. As per our PTA report, there are more than 217.1 million accounts on all combined social media platform just from Pakistan.

This is all from me for the "Steemit Engagement Challenge Season 8 Week 1 - "The Power of Social Media"". I invite @samminator, @malikusman1, @steemdoctor1, @simonnwigwe, @preye2, @lavanyalakshman, and @theentertainer to participate in this contest and tell us what is their view about social media power.