Social Media: A tool For Positive Or Negative Change?

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Social media is a word I'm sure we all are well accustomed to by now even if not all of us are acquainted with any social media platform. Throughout the years social media has become increasingly a part of our lives just as more and more people are introduced to the smartphones so also have the number of social media users greatly increased. But before we can talk about the effects of social media, we need to first talk about what social media is for the benefit of those that might still not know.

A Brief History On Social Media.
Man has been said to be a social animal and from time immemorial have searched for means of communicating with one another. The earliest forms of social media are letters, telegraph, radio and telephone with letters being the earliest form and dates as far back as 550 Bc and radio being the earliest at 1891 just a year after telephones which were made in 1890. While all these forms of communication have experienced their moments of popularity and faded, the one that has remained is the telephone which has been greatly improved upon and brings us to the twentieth century.
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Social Media In The Twentieth Century.
Of course we cannot talk about social media in the twentieth century and not talk about computers, so before I continue I'll just give a brief history of it. Throughout the 1940's to the 1990's there were ground breaking inventions from the creation of the first super computer which later lead to the creation of the internet and the earliest forms of the internet such as compuserve and usenet. When the use of home computers became more common in the 1980's it lead to the creation of Internet Relay Chats (IRC). The first recognizable social media site (Six Degrees) was created in 1997 while that of blogging came around 1999 creating a social media buzz that's still around today.

And that's it for the history part, I'd talk briefly about current day social media.

Current Day Social Media
You can't talk about social media in our current day without mentioning either Facebook or Twitter which both gained prominence in 2006, but before these two there were other's like MySpace, LinkedIn, and Co. Even YouTube came before Facebook and many others as well, social media has become so prominent that there has been different social networks created to serve specific social networking needs from picture sharing apps and sites like Flickr and Instagram to networks for streaming songs like Spotify and the likes.

Social media has been of tremendous help to the world and I'll just highlight a couple of them which I've tagged the pros and discuss briefly on each before moving on to the cons/disadvantages of social media.
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Pros

1. Connectivity
   This has been and still is the most important advantage of social media, where we can be instantly connected with anyone from anywhere in the world so long as they are connected to the internet. The ease of connectivity just makes social media all the more alluring.

2. Information
   Social media brings us information at our fingertips. Compared to the past where we'd have to wait for the news or get a newspaper, all we have to do now is go online and find the information we seek,easy.

3. Promotion/Advertising
   Social media is now a platform for business owners do advertise and promote their goods and or businesses, it reaches far more people than the conventional means of advertising.

4. Awareness
   Social media has been used by different NGOs to generate awareness for their different causes example of such is the BringBackOurGirls campaign in 2014. Source
   or The Ice Bucket Challenge, sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neurone disease and in the US as Lou Gehrig's disease) and encourage donations to research. It went viral on social media during July–August 2014.Source
   To name but a few.

5. Platform
   Social media as a platform has helped the likes of Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes to name but a few who rose to prominence after being seen by talent scouts online and given the opportunity to shine.

Well I'd like to move to the other side of the spectrum and talk about the cons of using social media.
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Cons

1. Insecurity
   With so much sharing going on in the social space, it is quite easy for one to be a victim. Either a victim of identity theft or a victim of scam, scammers are swarming the internet these day if if one is not careful they end up losing either their finances or their private information.

2. Cyber Bullying (Trolling)
   Bullying used to be a physical activity but with the advent of social media, bullying has now metamorphosed into an online thing, and this is becoming more rampant everyday and it is making the social sphere a mine field.

3. Addiction
   Social media can be really addictive and like all addictions it is dangerous, it causes a disconnect people that are really into social media are less active in the real world.

4. Distraction
   Social media can be so alluring and distracting that it can take your mind off important things, often time we get so distracted by social media that talking to people becomes a hassles because we get distracted by the many notifications we receive on our devices and sometimes even while driving we get the urge to take a peek at that alert that we almost lose control.

5. Destruction
   Just as easily as social media can bring someone to the fore it can also take someone else to extinction, all it takes is just one wrong move, a silly mistake and that picture or video that you didn't want anybody to see becomes whats trending worldwide.

As you can see social media has both positive and negative sides and I'm wandering do the pros really outweigh the cons or is social media just another creation of man gone wrong?,Does social media get a YES or NO?
Do tell me what you think in the comment section below.
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