Social media is a good thing or a bad thing? That is the most frequently asked question today. Well, there are always two sides of everything; it depends on your perspective on how you perceive it. The same goes for social media, most people admire it as a revolutionary invention and some seem to take it as a negative impact on the society.

We have complied some of the positive and negative opinions people express for social networks:

Positive Effects:

-Friends and Relations:

Social networks started as a place to connect with your friends in an easy an convenient way. Truly speaking, many of you might have found your old pals from school or college who were out of touch due to one reason or other, well I would say I have and I thank social networks for this. Social networks has provided us the opportunity to connect with people and build better relationships with friends with whom we are unable to meet personally, and let them know about our life and take input about their lives and events happening with them.

-Reducing Communication Barriers:

With social networks we are able to communicate our thoughts and perceptions over different topics with a large number of audiences, and raise our voice. The sharing feature available on the social networks makes your opinion about any topic reach huge number of people (even to those who are not on your friends list). We have the option to make groups with people who are like minded and share the related news with them and ask for their opinion or input about the topic. Simply there are a number of options available for us to communicate with others on these social networks.

-Opportunities for Businesses:

Social networks have become a crucial part of many of us. We don’t even notice this but as soon as we open our desktops or laptops to access the web, we sub-consciously open our favorite social network just to see about the updates received. Businesses have noticed the value of social networks in our life, and they are using different techniques to promote their products. There are a number of customized applications being made on the social platforms, whose main purpose is to promote the product or brand. As social marketing is cost effective and brands have a huge audience, they are shifting more towards social marketing.

Negative Effects:

-Leads to Addiction:

Many studies have shown that the extensive use of social media can actually cause addiction to the users. Throughout their day, they feel to post something on their pages or check others posts as it has become an important part of our life.

-Lead to Isolation:

Extreme usage of social media has reduced the level of human interaction. Because of social networks the interaction with other people has become effortless and people have isolated their lives behind their online identities. Face to face communication and meetings has been reduced and many of us have lost the flavor and charm to be together under one roof.

-Affecting Productivity:

Mostly businesses use social media to find and communicate with clients. But it is a great distraction to employees, who may show more interest in what their friends are posting than in their work tasks. Wired.com posted two studies which demonstrated damage to productivity caused by social networking. Nucleus Research reported that Facebook shaves 1.5% off office productivity while Morse claimed that British companies lost 2.2 billion a year to the social phenomenon. New technology products have become available that allow social networks to be blocked, but their effectiveness remains spotty.

Conclusion:

We have mentioned a few positive and negative points of social media, but it doesn’t explain that social media is good or a bad thing. It stands somewhere in between. You will remain wary in spite of these examples that either social media is a good or bad thing for society? We would live to hear about your thoughts and opinion about the question raised… Do you think Social Networks are good or bad?