Monday, December 14, 2015

Pros & Cons of Social Media

 Pros

·      Criminal prosecution because of social media
The NYC police department began using Twitter back in 2011 to track criminals foolish enough to brag about their crimes online. When the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in 2011, their Vancouver fans took to the streets and rioted, but local authorities used social media to track and tag the people involved, and they caught people who were stealing during the riot.

·      Social networking creates new social connections
Statistics show that 70% of adults have used social media sites to connect with relatives in other states, and 57% of teens have reported making new friendships on social media sites.

·      Students are doing better in school
This is an interesting statistic about the pros and cons of social media and its effect on students doing well in school. Students with internet access at a rate of 50% have reported using social networking sites to discuss school work, and another 59% talk about instructive topics.

·      Better quality of life
If you want to talk about the pros and cons of social media, take a close look at all the support groups on Facebook. Members of these groups discuss their health conditions, share important information, and resources relevant to their conditions while creating strong support networks.

·      Social media as a source of employment
Job sourcing has gone modern thanks to social media. Sites such as LinkedIn are a major resource that 89% of job recruiters take advantage of when looking to hire potential employees.

Cons

·      Social media and the news
Much of the news information that people read about comes from social media websites, and that figure estimate is around 27.8 %. This figure ranks just under print newspapers at 28.8%, greater than radio’s figure of 18.8% and far outpaces the figure for other print publications at just 6%.

·      People spending too much time on social media sites have lower academic grades
Here is another argument about the pros and cons of social media as it pertains to students. Statistics show that pupils using social media too often tend to have GPA’s of 3.06 compared to GPA’s of 3.82 for pupils who don’t use social media.
An even scarier fact is that students who use social media tend to score 20 % lower on their test scores then their counterparts.

·      Social media sites to blame for lost productivity
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are a direct cause for lost productivity at the workplace. In a survey 36 % of people said that social networking was the biggest waste of time in comparison to activities like fantasy football, shopping, and watching television.


3 comments:

  1. I think its really interesting that the list of pros is larger than the list of cons. I feel like your points that "students are doing better in school" and "social media sites are to blame for lost productivity" are contradictory, however.

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  2. I have to agree with General Jackie, I think that social media and the internet in general is such a unique space that it's difficult to ascertain whether or not it's inherently 'good' or 'bad' for the minds of students. Even now in 2015, the internet is changing so much, and how we use social media in our daily lives will continue to change in the future. I think that people can use social media as another space in order to spread ideas and share information, but the most damaging aspect of social media would probably be the lack of accurate sourcing. There''s no need for reputable sources on social media because whatever people choose to make popular will in turn become true to those people who wish to believe it, whether it's true or not. But conversely, social media allows common people to spread information that larger news organizations and governments might want restricted from the public.

    So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that social media is kind of like a double-edged sword.

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