By 
It is hard to believe that just a decade ago, social media was a budding trend and websites like Friendster and Myspace started to get the population together. Fast forward to 2014, social media not only became a part of the modern lifestyle, but also a useful marketing channel for all businesses of all sizes.
Before getting into the debate of whether social media is good or bad, we will discuss how social media has officially and permanently changed our lives with the evolution of smartphones and social networking.
How has Social Media Changed Our Lives Positively?
In this blog, let’s look at ways how social media has impacted our lives over the years, both personally and professionally.
Immediate Source of Information
With thousands of media companies in the United States, social media still stands at the number one immediate source of information. It gives you access to information and news through a person’s observation of the whole situation before the news even breaks domestically.
It not only expands our sources of content as a whole, but with so much of content being blogged and written, later curated and shared proactively has caused no shortage of viewpoints and conclusions about what is happening around us.
Social Networking
With the main objective of connecting people through social media, we now do not have to dial numbers back and forth to reach out to someone living on the other end of the world. Today, you can catch anyone through just a click on the phone by leaving a voice mail or a text.
Or even better, you could just tweet, use Facebook messenger or use other social media platforms to keep a regular check on what others are doing in their lives, assuming they share it on their social network.
Globalized Voice
Maybe 10 years back, sending a letter to the editor of a newspaper or waiting for days to get an appointment to raise an issue was a problem, but today, social media is the cure to all these problems.
All we have to do is login to our platform of choice, perform activities which we prefer to do such as sharing content, memes, images, telling jokes, tweeting about a serious issue, raising voice against a public issue, speaking your heart and mind out without being afraid, only in a couple of minutes.
As you put your thoughts into words, it reaches out to millions of people making you noticeable and recognizable. It makes every person has a Globalized Voice to stand up for themselves or against someone.
Beneficial for Businesses
You must agree how social media has helped booming and new businesses to amplify their message across the world through the global reach of social media. Earlier, as companies spent millions of bucks advertising their products through traditional mass media methods, it only kept deepening their pockets.
Now, even a small company can reach out to the whole world only in a couple of days with proper marketing done through social media. Just by simply sharing the concept of the business, sharing opinions or any new knowledge provided the companies to have a voice on par which spread like wildfire.
Hidden Identities
Anonymity has been going around the internet since the beginning of its evolution. But, with social media it is even harder to shield the identities and speaking behind these virtual masks. From having almost every kind of content category such as trolls to pranksters, it makes it less productive and enjoyable for the majority of visitors.
People find it easier to speak against someone or take out their personal feud by commenting anonymously, rather, they should use some common sense before putting out any such statements on a global platform. It is not a representation of cowardness, but a representation of lack of character.
Power of Hashtags
Originated from Twitter and slowly made its way to all other social networks, Hashtags serve an important purpose as you could create one tied to a specific trend, event or topic. As it was a great way to enable focused conversation in order to make the most out of the platform. This was the beauty of Hashtags; it was powerful yet simple and tailor made for everyone’s personal experience.
Today, hashtags have further grown into a phenomenon of their own. Some people use it for business purposes, some use them for fun while some use them in the traditional way possible. Users are still experimenting with new ways of applying hashtags. They work as keywords for social media and have truly become an important part of the online discussion culture.
Platform for Opinions
Talking about politics, religion or any other personal space of life, the discussion over such topics escalates quickly. Every person has their own opinion and different belief system from someone else, which leads to back and forth of fights and defensive arguments.
These are considered delicate topics, which might seem easy to start a conversation online but as they go ahead, it devolves into personal attacks and negative judgements on each other’s character.
Indulging into such conversation might lead to losing your close ones over your differentiated opinions, regardless of how they are depicted by the traditional media. Social media is a not a fighting pit, it has many other better purposes.
Amplification of Negative Thoughts
While it might seem easy to say something negative on social media sitting behind a computer, every day the number of blog posts or trolls highlighting hateful, misinformed or just delusional comments are increasing.
Sharing something hateful or something that might offend another person expresses outrage while amplifying the negative thoughts of a person. Do not feed the trolls and stop giving attention to such behavior.
Conclusion
Being a platform for many positive things such as helping businesses, communicating with long lost friends and for entertainment, it also has its drawbacks, giving a platform to people who bring others down or share negative behaviors and opinions.
It is important that you understand truly how social media can impact your life and change it in a positive way rather than indulging in negative activities.
