The Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media

Social Media has become extremely popular in today's culture. Some people embrace this newfound idea of social media to communicate, others are highly protestant about it and do not associate themselves with it. It is important to see both sides opinions on why social media can hurt us just as easy as it can help us. Although there are many speculations and opinions about how social media is affecting us and if it is for better or worse, there are many pros and cons to social media.

There are many shapes and sizes of the social media available to everyone today. This essay will talk about the four main social media apps today. Some are centered around sharing what you're doing such as Facebook and Instagram. Others are used to send updates through pictures or words such as Snapchat and Twitter. These different aspects of each app are seen as communication tools for the people and for many businesses.

Snapchat is an infamous app that is targeted towards today's youth. There is much controversy about whether people should endorse this app or not. Snapchat is an app where two people send pictures as messages back and forth and place pictures on their stories for everyone to see. Many parents have a problem with this app because pictures are deleted once you open them and cannot be seen again. There is worry about the use of this app for sexting, or sending pictures of oneself to another for pleasure. Snapchat is also used to help connect distant family. This photo message idea allows grandparents to see their grandkids, and cousins see their aunts and uncles.

Facebook is an app meant to connect people through messaging and posting pictures of their daily life. Facebook is generally used by an older audience and is used for life updates, messaging, and buying and selling items. This app is widely used for networking, dating, business, and the news. Facebook is also at a disadvantage with for the privacy conditions, and the millions of fake profiles of impersonators. (rahul964. Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook.) Twitter is an app that sends out messages that consist of single words or a paragraph to your followers. These so-called tweets are usually just updates on how people are doing or what they are thinking. Twitter accounts only see tweets from the accounts they follow, so there is not much spam on this app. Some find the tweets annoying, as some people update frequently, while others on the occasion. Twitter is a widely accessible app, which is what helps to make it so popular.

Instagram is a widely used app, especially by today's youth. It allows you to post pictures while checking up on others accounts. It has a new feature that models Snapchat and allows users to send photos back and forth by means of chatting (Instagram Help Center. Privacy Policy | Instagram Help Center). Instagram is the second largest social media platform, just behind Snapchat.

Disadvantages of social media platforms would include things like content shown, harmful comments, and the ability to see anything. Instagram's disadvantages would include the suggested content seen. Instagram also allows people that follow an account to also post comments on pictures that a user might post. Some of these comments are hateful and include discreet language. Twitter's disadvantages would be lengthy tweets and annoying noises for every notification that is hard to turn off. Facebook has the same adult content discrepancy problem and users can also post comments on Facebook posts. Snapchat seems to have the slew of all the problems. Snapchat is widely hated for its picture deletion policy because this allows suggestive photographs to be sent and never seen again. Snapchat also has a new feature that allows a user to look at a map and see just where everyone they follow is. These are a few downsides to the popular social media platforms today (Hatcher, Jon Patrick. 20 Pros and Cons of Social Media Use.).

While there are definitely cons to these platforms, there are also a lot of pros to these apps as well. Instagram is said to help connect people no matter where they are, which is a great tool in the busy world in which we live in. Instagram also has settings that allow a person to put restrictions on what they can see in their feed, and you can make an account private. This means that someone must request to follow you and you have to accept it before they can see anything that you have posted to your account. Twitter allows anyone to follow a user, yet that user can, in turn, remove the follower from seeing the tweets he/she sends out (Laverty, Shea. Advantages & Disadvantages of Twitter.). Facebook allows public and private accounts and is said to be great for businesses to gain endorsers and customers. Snapchat allows friends and family to stay up to date with each other and the world around them. Snapchat displays several news articles and ads on the pages seen to keep their users in the loop on what is happening.

All in all, there are many different views on social media platforms. The overall opinion is divided between whether or not social media is a good thing or a bad thing. It is a highly debated topic and is presented with a plethora of pros and cons and whether or not it is good for the youth and businesses or not. Social media is growing each day, sometimes in a positive light, sometimes in a negative light. Everything depends on how one sees the world.

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