Currently, the world is experiencing a massive change in how communication is carried out. From Facebook to Twitter, and everywhere in between, people are starting to exchange talking for electronic communication. Is this a good or a bad change? The answer is not so simple that it can be applied to everyone, it is truly subjective.
Pros:
One of the pros of the change to this electronic communication through social media is the sheer ease with which people can reach one another. That lost friend from school? Found! These outlets make it so simple to find people that one has lost contact with, or are looking to talk to but really never have time during any given day to get to know the other.
Another benefit of social media is the sharing of one’s ideas to a much wider audience. Through social media, anyone and everyone can spread his or her thoughts to the entire community of their chosen social media outlet. This makes it so much easier to collaborate with others and find where one really stands on topics and what to think of what is going on around him or her.
Cons:
The simplicity of being found is one con to the social media movement. There are plenty of people who use social media outlets to find people in the real world. With finding people so easy from these outlets, the risk of being raped, kidnapped or killed increases with the more detail one puts out for the public to see.
An additional con of social media is the substitution of face to face interaction with people for looking at a screen and carrying out communication from there. Without mediation, this kind of disconnected communication can compound certain social defects that some people suffer from, such as social anxiety.
Finally, there is the risk of becoming addicted to social media. This is a relatively new concept. People seem to be moving to compulsively checking their social media outlets for updates on what others are doing, or in the hope that people have responded to something that he or she has posted. Progressively spending more time on these social media sites rather than enriching their mind, or going out and spending time with the friends they are compulsively following on these sites.
Conclusion:
After weighing the pros and cons of social media, all of which are certainly not listed here, the decision is left to everyone so come to a conclusion of his or her own. If the pros of social media outweigh the cons, then by all means partake, and vice versa. Social media has become the new juggernaut that will define a generation, much like the internet did in terms of communication.