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The effects of Social Media on society

Nowadays, Social networking platforms such as Facebook play a vast role in the industry, but what are the effects that it presents to us? The role of social media can be entirely positive as it connects people around the world where as 10 years ago we could not. However, it can also be negative by the current situation on cyber-bullying.

 

When we think of social media, Facebook would be the main thought that would cross our mind. It has provided so many great benefits to people all over the world; it has given families that have roots in other countries a way to connect and interact with each other. Many of us have profiles that we use to talk to friends or family, or to even play games. It provides entertainment to everybody whether it’s playing games, or chatting to a close friend that has moved countries. In some respects, it has now become a daily routine to check-up on your profile to see what’s going on every day in the ‘cyber world’.

 

Although social media can have positive influences, it can also prove to be very negative. Today’s teenagers are becoming increasingly vulnerable to bullying. Not just in school time, but also online. In fact, social media has provided an entire new environment for bullying to take place. Approximately 1 in 5 New Zealand students have reported being cyber-bullied which goes to show the negative effects that social media has on today’s society. This being said, there are over 800 million registered active users on Facebook, with a majority of them being teenagers, it would be impossible to protect teenagers from cyber bullying if social media were to rise in popularity from where it is now.

 

While the negative aspects of social media currently out-weigh the positive, there is still a large opportunity to fix that with today’s technology. It should not be a large task to be able to tackle a fraction of what is going on in the cyber-world. Introducing students to methods of staying safe while the internet would be one of the most important aspects that need to be addressed, teaching students to ignore and report would prove to be very effective on the internet. It is reported that 1 in 3 teenagers have been bullied at some point in their life. That is quite a very daunting number to think about, and it should not be taken lightly since most of it nowadays is originating from the internet social media websites such as Bebo, Facebook etc which is now gaining a large amount of popularity over younger teenagers, especially girls. Cyber bullying originates from the internet and should be stopped there to prevent further damage to the victim.

 

To conclude, bullying has taken a turn for the worst in the last few years. Social media has more of a negative influence on society than positive, but this can be resolved through various methods such as introducing students to programmes where they are taught how to stay safe whilst on the internet. If the negative influences are solved successfully, then social media will have positive effects on society where we will be able to connect with many, be entertained, and not have to worry about being threatened or harassed.