Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate today. Now we can have more friends than ever before. But, at the same time, online relationships can become shallow. They promote depression and a lack of interest in real-life acquaintances. Networking websites have lots of pros and cons. For example, businesses turn to various platforms to promote themselves. The same goes for personal brands and small companies. Let’s dive deeper into what makes social media so controversial.
Why is It So Compelling?
According to statistics, teens can spend more than six hours a day on sites like TikTok and Instagram. Of course, there’s a reason for that. These platforms offer lots of perks that make them irresistible to users. For example:
- You can express your ideas and worldview via posts and comments
- You can follow the news and what’s happening around the world
- You can create groups based on your hobbies and interests
- You can make friends much easier than before
- You can promote your brand or service for free
Imagine you own hausarbeit-ghostwriter.de. It’s a ghostwriting service that offers writing articles in German. Let’s say you want to promote it. The first thing you need to do is create various profiles for your company. Use the power of Facebook and Instagram to promote your business. Creating a YouTube channel would be the next step if you want to expand your client base further.
The Biggest Pros of Social Media
We’ve mentioned the main things that attract millions of users to networking sites. But of course, the list is bigger than that. Let’s review some of the other reasons:
- You can stay connected to the people you care about no matter where you are in the world
- You can run marketing campaigns using different ad services
- These platforms are great places to research your target audience
- Communication has never been easier. Various platforms offer chat services. There you can exchange audio, video, and pictures for a more immersive experience
- It’s a huge entertainment hub that provides users with hours upon hours of fun things to do. You can watch shorts on TikTok or informative videos on YouTube. You can also spend hours scrolling through your Instagram feed
- YouTube also delves into education, promoting a thing that’s called edutainment. Now you can have fun watching videos and learn something new while you’re at it
- Social media can aid in studies and various types of research. It’s a great source of information and ways to learn new skills
Building a personal brand has also become easy these days. All you need to do is create a few profiles! Of course, you also need to know all the ins and outs of networking algorithms. Still, you can use platforms like YouTube to learn all that!
The Drawbacks of Social Media
Like with all things in life, social media platforms have their dark side, too. Human relationships have suffered due to all things moving online. You can never substitute a live meeting with a chat session. Many people find it harder to maintain relationships when most of the talking has gone online. Here are some of the disadvantages we need to know about:
- These platforms can become a huge distraction for people. This means lower productivity and more stress
- There are a lot of fake connections happening on social media platforms. It becomes harder to build actual friendships and find partners
- Trolling has become a huge thing in the online world. Many platforms become a place of harassment and bullying, especially for celebrities
- Social media promotes self-esteem issues. People start comparing themselves to others and lose confidence in themselves
- These platforms can also cause anxiety and stress. People feel obliged to document their every step and share it with the world. Likewise, other people need to always check their profiles for comments
- Privacy is a huge issue nowadays because of platforms like Facebook and Instagram. People tend to talk too much about their personal matters. Data breaches can cause their personal information leaking to the Internet
These are some of the issues associated with social media accounts. We can now see that these platforms have as many cons as they have pros.
Conclusion
We can’t imagine our lives without platforms like Instagram and Facebook in them. We use chats every day to communicate with our friends and families.
Some of us haven’t used a phone to make an actual call for years! Social media services are very handy and help us promote our businesses. Still, we can’t ignore the issues that they cause. These involve the increase of anxiety and stress levels among younger people. We need to be mindful of these things as well.