I had a discussion at the dinner table with my family the other night about the use of social media and how quickly things spread once something is posted. It was interesting to hear the different opinions each of us had and to compare how the different generations view social media. It suddenly became more of a dinner table debate than a discussion and I decided to use what I had heard in my next blog post! I found that the younger generation was focused more on the positive
es of social media and the older generation focused more on the negatives.
Though we all agreed that it’s great how fast information can spread using social networking, someone pointed out how that also means unreliable and false information can be spread just as fast. Whether it be personal news or world news, good news or bad news it can spread in only a matter of minutes. I’m sure anyone who uses Facebook must have seen that hoax post written in all capital letters about how it will start charging users. “PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON OR YOU ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY!” My news feed was covered in these posts and I caught myself wondering if maybe it was true this time before brushing it off like the other five times I had seen that post within the year. 
My dad pointed out how nothing is private anymore and that it’s so easy for someone to access your information or hack your account. I’ve always been warned that what I post online stays online even if I delete it. Now I am beginning to worry if something I had posted as a teenager may come back to haunt me. I have also been a victim credit card fraud, which led me through a very lengthy investigation to have my funds returned to me.
Cyber bullying was a topic that kept coming up throughout the discussion and though cyber bullying is an awful thing, bullying has been around long before social media so even if social media didn’t exist bullying would still be a huge problem. There are different degrees of bullying and I think social media has made it very easy for people to bully and harass others. Social media has given people a way to continue to torment or intimidate someone without having to be face to face.
My main use for social media is to keep up with friends who have moved away. To stay in contact with people who I don’t see every day. Even if I’m not speaking to them directly I can see things they have posted. When I traveled social media is how I stayed in contact with my family so they knew I was alive and safe!
I could go on an on listing the pros and cons that were said during dinner but I am and always will be pro social media. We’ve entered the digital age and I don’t think social media will ever disappear. We can only learn more about it and be careful.
I do agree with each point that was made throughout our dinner debate and am curious to hear what others might think.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 
Like you, I believe the pros outweigh the cons, though I do worry about how our socializing via social media is highly monetized. Businesses make money from our information and companies are becoming increasingly savvy at maximizing profit via our social media use, from ads, to ever changing terms of agreement (to maximize data sharing), to even that small FB Like button. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I think our often fun, harmless social media sharing can serve less-than-transparent purposes, both legal and illegal.