Beatrice Khaiza,

Professor Batty

English 101

22 February 2018

How Social Media has both Positive and Negative Impacts on our Lives.

The oldest and most powerful form of mass media is the word, both written and

spoken; from Priests to travelling storytellers, and the word has held credibility. A new platform,

social media, has transformed and taken the power of the world to new levels. Social media can

be defined as any website that enables social interaction including social networking sites such as

Twitter, Myspace, Instagram, Facebook, gaming sites, YouTube, and many others (AAP

abstract). These sites are conduits for dialogues between the vast populations, held in very

visible formats like phones, computers, televisions, tablets, and so on. According to the mural

that I observed, the artist was trying to enlighten the impacts of social media on our day-to-day

lives with the negative impacts- which couldn’t be analyzed on a quick view, underneath the

positive impacts. In this mural, some girls were sitting in a group of three with devices in their

hands, books on the table and one of them was noting down something in the book. Another

group of both genders on their right-hand side. Most of these people were attentively staring at

their electronics in their hands while others were simply gazing at them. With those who were

staring at the devices could have been reading from them or just watching something and also

chatting something because of the small tweets that crowded the mural space. In the background,

there were also buildings that could be business or residential buildings. Though people have

inadequately analyzed the effects of social media today, with it has brought both positive and
 negative impacts in the common areas of usage such as communication and relationships in the

society, business, education system, and.

In the past decade, social media websites have become ubiquitous, giving people

especially the youths a new way to interact with each other and communicate with the world. As

observed from the mural, the artist illustrated this with the youths watching or reading something

from their electronics. Social media has positively helped people to stay connected, exchange

information and advice, and get access to jobs advertised online. This results into unite of people

in a society and worldwide beyond the geographical boundaries bringing in development in a

society and nation at large. However, in their article at http://pediatrics.appublications.org,Gwen

Schurgin O’keeffe, Kathleen Clarke-Pearson, point out the impacts of social media from a

sociological perspective. Social media has influenced many people to become addicted to the

social sites like face book, Instagram, twitter, among others; spending a lot of time on these sites

diverts people’s concentration when doing their tasks, affects their health, sometimes lowers a

person’s creativity; and has encroached people’s privacy as their information can be easily found

on these social sites that they use. They illustrate this with,” Social media has also ceased face-

to-face communication especially among the youths since they prefer expressing themselves

through the site dialogues” (O’keeffe). It can also be seen that social media affects the

communication ability and relationships of people in the society; as it was illustrated by the little

tweet boxes in the mural space among the crowd, the artist was bringing out the fact that even in

the same environment, people nowadays have found social media as a cool communication tool

and this sometimes leads to isolation of people from nature. This hinders people from acquiring

communication skills since they are comfortable when they use social media.
 In addition to social media affecting communication in a society, it has also affected

many businesses. In their article at www.ijhss.org, Hakim Khalid Mehraj, Akhtar Neyaz Bhat,

Hakeem Rameez Mehraj, claim that nowadays if companies hope to succeed, they must embrace

social media. This is because the borders of countries and states have been dissolved to the

credit of the internet and social media. They illustrate this with “Through the different social

sites, companies are able to fabricate and build virtual personalities with their customers

(Mehraj). As in the mural, the population would have been staring at their devices- doing

sopping, watching commercials and business updates. This gives the funs an opportunity to

comment, ask questions about the business services, and also get their respective responses from

the companies. These instantaneous dialogues give companies a chance to release promotional

offers, create awareness among the new brands with little to no budget, enhance market insight

with their rivals, and understand their audience or customers depending on their likes, dislikes,

and comments they post on the company services. This in return boosts the growth and

expansion of the many organizations. In contrast, with these dialogues, Hakim adds on that since

the customers have got the freedom of expression, a customer or even an anti-fan can easily post

false or a negative comment which can lead a business to a failure. He shows this when he says

that “Getting involved with social media is time consuming for companies as it requires a person

to bolster and update the company’s profile and also analyze the results from the audience

(Mehraj). What is at stake here is the businesses’ safety. Many companies have also fallen

victims to hackers since their information is being displayed on theses social sites. Which

sometimes puts their works at risk.

Furthermore, use of social media has also led to the rise of a new technological

education system. This is where ‘’online’’ classes have recently emerged for the past few years.
For example, I take a ‘Hybrid’ class that is two hours in total with one hour in class and the other

online. I also suppose that from the mural, some people were attempting some assignments,

which has enabled many other students who can’t express their ideas in class to be able to

express them online. It also saves time and covers a larger area of concepts because most youths

can easily handle spending much time on line compared to physical attendance attempting the

uploaded assignments by their instructors. From the mural, the artist portrayed this with the girls

who were holding their devices with books on the table. One of the girls was writing which can

be assumed that she was doing her homework or something of the kind. However, social media

lessens on the students’ concentration in class with the hopes of doing the work online. It also

doesn’t guarantee 100% of students’ success because not many can be having sufficient

computer skills and the few population can also be distracted with the instant site dialogues in

the process of doing the assignments. It can harbor laziness in students since they tend to

postpone their study time.

In conclusion, it can be seen that social media has impacted our lives both positively

and negatively in the different areas of usage like communication, business and education. It has

become a norm for people to easily communicate, do business, and even acquire knowledge via

social sites. However, it has ceased face to face communication among people, creativity, and

has put people’s safety at risk. Despite the fact that social media has its both positive and

negative impacts on our lives, as viewed from the mural, I found that the major chunk is us the

consumers who use social networking sites more than two hours which is affecting our general

health and creative participation in our respective communities. I also found that social media

has played both constructive and destructive roles and, in the end, it’s up to the individual and

society at large to decide which site to use, considering more of its advantages and bringing up
strategies to minimize the disadvantages. Social media has generally brought about development

in our lives, where as it has also destroyed many occasions most especially creativeness among

people. But all I believe is that if we all put our hands-on table, we can desperately enjoy its

fruits.
 Work Citied

Mehraj, Hakim Khalid, et al. “Impacts of Social Media on a Society.” International Journal of

Humanities and Social Science Invention, 6 June 2016, www.ijhss.org.

O’Keeffe, Gwenn Schurgin, et al. “Pediatrics clinical report; The Impact of Social Media on

Children, Adolescents, and Families. ’American Academy of Pediatrics, 01 April,

2015.http://Pediatrics.aappublications.org