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Are they r eally making us lonely and suicidal like Alexandra Sifferlin and David D. Luxton believe? Or are people not looking at the benefits and the realistic side, like I believe? All these journalists can see one story and link how a cell phone might have linked to it. They can go and write a convincing story about how “bad” cell phones are but I think you have to look at it from e very aspect and also look at some of the benefits, as well as the negatives. Cell phones can be used to access a wide plethora of information, connect with those all over the world, and get ourself out there, such as a business, program, or organization.
Certainly, there have been a lot of articles published lately that indicate the ne gative effects of social media. For Instance, Alexandra Sifferlin, an author for TIME Heathland, asserts that it makes you lonely and depressed. She cites a study by Hanna Kr asnova that indicates people are reducing their use because it makes them lonely. From t his perspective, Schuldt 2 one can see how this might be true, yet maintain that this is going to happen anyways in life and shouldn’t be blamed on social media.
Another proponent of social media safeguards, Bonnie Rochman, another aut horfor TIME, cites the American Academy of Pediatrics who argue that pediatricians should discuss social media depression with kids. According to this view, we can see that kids need to be warned about the dangers of social media before they just go out and use it ( Rochman). on the one hand, agree that they should be taught the dangers, yet I also ackno wledge that its not Facebook that causes the depression, it’s you. Facebook is just a trigger a nd there are a lot of things besides social media that are triggers. Therefore, it can’t be blam d on social media.
Several Groups have begun to research the effects Of social media in the lives of teens. One study performed by Common Sense Media shows that teens still p refer facetoface over other forms of communications (qtd. in “Positive or Negative”) They cite statistics such as nine out of ten teenagers have social media and 51 percent of teens check their social media daily. Nevertheless, their statistics also show that 41 percen t of teens say they re addicted and one out of three teens have seen bad material on social media. From this we can see that there are negative effects as well as positive.
I think this s hows that they are good tools as long as we control ourselves and use them as tools. Another study performed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project indic ates that there is a huge amount of differences between male and females, and teens a nd adults using social media (qtd. in Jones). Specific statistics indicate that 90 percent of adult s are just lurkers and girls are more likely to use than boys. These findings are interesti ng because its changed alot since these statistics were taken back in 2008. I think this proves that technology and the internet have come a long ways since 2008. Schuldt 3
In another project by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, they found out that over 92 percent of people get their news from more than one platform and th at 62 percent of people get their news from the internet (Gross). Technology has changed so much we have access to an insane amount of knowledge right at our fingertips. With just an “Okay Google” we can find the answer to just about any question. With places like wikipedia. com and dictionary. com, these are incredibly good resources for school. They are a gre at tool for visual learners, especially with all the educational videos you can find on YouTube o just about any topic.
Powerpoints, spreadsheets, and documents are easier than ever to use with Google Drive. With such a wide plethora of uses for finding information, I’d say this is definitely a huge positive for social media. What did you use to have to do to meet someone across the world? You had t o be a penpal and write annoying letters thatyou had to translate and didn’t learn h ardly anything about that person. Now, you have Twitter, Instagram, and tons of other social medias where you can meet new people with something as simple as a hashtag. The best pa rt, is Google Translate: multilingual service provided by Google Inc. o translate written text from one language into another. It supports ninety languages. Just copy and paste the conversation into Google Translate and have it easily changed to English with the click of th e Translate button. As you can see, this is a huge benefit of social media. So you have the brilliant idea for an organization to get money for homeless a nimals? Now how do you get started? Make flyers? use word of mouth? Well now you can eliminate all of that and do ten times more work. With Facebook pages you can create a page for your rganization, and get tons of followers seeing your page really easy.
Get every one you know to share the page and pretty soon you have tons of people seeing your aweso me organization. Another cool tool on Facebook is GoFundMe. G0FundMe iS a crowdfund ing Schuldt 4 platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life event s such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. With this awesome tool, people can donate money to your organization right throu gh the page. You can see how much has been donated, who has been donating, and people ca n write essages on it.
This is a great tool for raising money and getting everyone to see and support. As you can see, social media does have its positives and negatives. With a lot people getting involved and spreading their opinions, it’s easy to see why cell phones and social media are a horrible thing. You might start believing that you shouldn’t use your Twitter any more. But when you actually look at the benefits, I think they greatly outw ay the negatives. The “problems” that they say that they create, are a lot of problems that would happen anyt. vays.
Social media can be linked as a factor but i wouldn’t say it is he cause, and think people just use it as an excuse to pin it on social media. Social media c an find information, connect friends, and expand your possibilities, and that is why I believe that social media is a good thing.