Social media has taken our world by storm. It is no longer possible to go out somewhere, without seeing a “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” attached to almost every company out there, whether it be on a billboard or a commercial. The uprising of social media began in around 2009 (as depicted in this Google Trends graph). Of course by this time, Twitter already existed and by the next year had 50 million 
tweets a day, as well as being ranked the third highest social networking site in January 2009. In addition, during this time Facebook overtook MySpace, while MySpace struggled with a mass loss of membership. There are of course many more social media sites (YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pintrest, etc.), but these two are the main ones that almost everyone has either used or still does use it.
There is no doubt when it comes to the fact that social media, has become a part of our lives, to the point that it can affect us in any way, be it negative or positive.
The Good
Thanks to sites like Facebook, it makes it possible and easy for all of us to keep in contact with family and friends who may not live in the same country as us. This is something that personally I find important, as I have friends who are studying in England and Scotland and many family members scattered across Eastern and Northern Europe. In a survey done with 2277 adults, 67% percent claimed that their major reason for using a social media platform was simply to keep in touch with friends and family. The article which discusses this survey (and can be found here), further goes on to discuss how reconnecting with old friends is also an important aspect of using social media sites.
In addition to keeping in touch with others, social media sites (specifically ones like Twitter and Reddit) are a great way to keep up with what is going on in the world around us. People are becoming less and less dependent on traditional media (televised news reports, newspapers). Social media sites make it easy to communicate within seconds to people who may be half way across the world from a certain incident. Additionally, many print newspapers are now stopping their printing and moving their news to the internet because as depicted in the information graphic below, 50% of people will find out about breaking news via social media than traditional media, even if that information may not always be entirely accurate.
A great visual explanation of how many of us are switching to relying on social media for our news reports.
The Bad
As mentioned above having the news reported to you by some sort of social media it very efficient and quick; however, the information may not always be entirely true, or it even might be an entirely made up story. It is definitely a good idea to check the sources of information rather than taking it to heart. For example, the Onion is a satirical website, that has hilariously outrageous and completely untrue “news reports”.
An example of these fake news reports, was one created by the Onion, that claimed Kim Jong Un the “Sexist man alive for 2012”, or the “cut for Bieber” incident in which 4chan (specifically the forum known as /b/), in which they created a Twitter trend to have fans of Bieber cut themselves so he would stop smoking marijuana (which is something he supposedly does not do).
The Ugly
So far I have covered what good social media has in store for us and also the bad things, how anyone with a Twitter account and internet access can pretend to be a reporter, whether or not the information is always true can be questionable.
Now on to the darker side of social media. As undermentioned, pays a big role in most peoples lives to the point that it can effect them emotionally.
Less than six months ago, Amanda Todd, a 15 year old girl who committed suicide due to cyber bullying. As a young girl would frequent video chats, during one of which she was asked to show her breasts and then was then immediately blackmailed by the individual to do more, or the photo of her breast would be shown to her friends.
A few months later the photo was on the internet and about a year later, the individual created a Facebook page, with the photo as the profile picture and began contacting her schoolmates. She was teased and made fun of in school which lead to her making a YouTube video titled “My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide and self harm”. Needless to say the video is a heart wrenching one, in which she discusses how she was bullied both online and in real life and how she attempted to take her life previously before. It is a tragic thing to see such a young girl who had barely lived her life to want to take her, all because of the simplicity created from being able to hide behind an online identity (no body said that your Facebook or Twitter identities had to be real).
Another example of the ugly side of social media, is its ability to promote “ideal body types”, which can usually turns young girls to eating disorders to try and achieve that ideal body. Since almost everyone posts pictures of themselves on social media sites (be it Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, etc.) it is easy to compare oneself to another and become extremely self-conscious. For example, many eating disorder communities have turned to Tumblr, using tags such as: “pro ana and thinspo”, attempting to make it seem glamorous to have concave stomach and severely sticking out clavicles, when in fact this is extremely unhealthy. They even promote and motivate other girls to join this type of lifestyle (more about this can be read here).
What now?
Well social media is not going anywhere any time soon, it is going to be part of our lives for a very long time and of course that gives us the possibility to make it into a powerful tool. However, in order to achieve that we are going to need to find a way to weed out all or most of the false information and also find a way to protect people from being cyber bullied anonymously.
{tech talks} 