Social media, the new reality?

Photo by Tommy Tong

Social media has been a big thing since the early 2000’s with Myspace and Facebook starting the trend. Since then, new platforms and copycats have jumped on the bandwagon such as Instagram, Vine, Twitter and much more. These days social media is being used by almost everyone and seems like it’s a new way of life. If you want to contact a friend or a family member, one tap and you’re in contact with them. You can’t deny that people would rather send a quick text than interact face to face with someone. Even when spending time with friends or family, most people will be drawn to their phones to check social media.

Photo by Filo via Getty Images

One reality of social media is the news. You can’t always believe what you read but unfortunately it’s not the case for everyone. There is a lot of fake news on these platforms that could cause people to be misinformed and share that information further on where it could cause issues. Let’s be honest, news on social media travels faster than news on TV since we follow celebrities that most likely will also speak about it. Have you ever fallen for fake news?  If yes, you’re not the only one! According to statista.com 52% of news on social media news are fake or made up.

Photo by Sergiu Gatlan

Communicating in person is easy to see who you are talking to but, on social media it’s another story. There are a lot of fake accounts activated each day with fake names and pictures. Unfortunately it is all too common to photoshop a picture and make it seem like it’s yours. You have to be careful, some fake accounts could be your crazy ex looking to see how you’re doing or may be a creep/predator looking for a prey. Furthermore it could be someone posting as a girl when in fact is a male looking to scam vice versa.

With all of this technology and social media wouldn’t you think there would be better security?

Fake news: https://bit.ly/3eqVBBj

Should leaders use social media?

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Source; Twitter via @realdonaldtrump

Social media is used by everyone these days. Celebrities, clothing brands, everyday people, leaders and more, we can’t deny once we post something online it will be there forever. Have you ever posted something and later having regrets? If yes I promise you are not the only one. A lot of celebrities jeopardize their career by posting something they shouldn’t have or speaking on something they didn’t have a say in. For example popular Youtube star Logan Paul, back in December 2018 filmed himself on vacation in Japan, filmed himself in what’s called “Suicide Forest” knowing very well the history behind the forest. That vlog showed a suicide victim, and received backlash. Logan Paul is now doing okay for himself and is still posting content but the video will never be forgotten. Just like President Donald Trump’s tweets. Donald Trump is known for being unfiltered and saying the wrong things. 

For example:

Source: Twitter via @realdonaldtrump

Given the recent death of George Floyed igniting the Black Lives Matter movement around the world, this is a very incentive tweet to put out. This is the President of the United States, a leader, a person who is supposed to make his people feel safe and cared for. Yet he thinks it’s appropriate to exclaim his opinion on trying to defund the police department. This is one of many controversial tweets.

Source: Twitter via @realdonaldtrump

Although Donald Trump is one of many leaders, not all are bad on social media. Many of them use their platform for good purposes.

For example former President Barack Obama:

Source: Twitter via @BarackObama By Julianne Pepitone

When Obama was president he would do anything in his power to reasure the public. These are two prime example of leaders using their platform for either good or bad. In my opinion I think that leaders should have a team that keeps an eye on their social media and redirect if needed.

In your opinion, should leaders have professionals taking care of their social media?

Social media good or bad for society? – Opinion

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Kiev, Ukraine – October 17, 2012 – Include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Vimeo, Flickr, Myspace, Tumblr, Livejournal, Foursquare and more other logos.

Through-out the years, social media has helped multiple organization’s and causes but at the same time affected a lot of people mentally and physically. I was having a conversation with my girlfriend, we were talking about instagram models and even though she said they didn’t affect her personally she told me that she had friends that have been through mental breakdown and health issues trying to look like those top models. A lot of people will say just don’t follow them or pay attention to it and that’s not an option when it comes to the media they are everywhere, those models pay other celebrities to promote their feeds and multiple other ways to get more attention, although the percentage of people affected by that is in the lowest these days it still happen often. Another bad thing about social media is the rappers talking about females like they are objects and in other words you need to be “slim thick” and the body trend in 2020. To be honest this has always been an issue, people want to look like their favorite celebrities or follow the body trend and it does affect some daily. Another internet and social media problem would have to be cyberbullying which is common these days and is a huge issue that unfortunately affected multiple lives and a lot took their own lives because of it but there’s a lot of resources as of now to deal with it especially on instagram and facebook. Social media addiction is also a thing most of us teenagers and young adults have it, it can be from posting every single day to always being on a platform it is very very hard to stay away from it, I won’t lie I am one of them I am truly addicted to it but only because of my music every day I’m promoting it and it’s easy to put it out there.

During these tough times I think social media is an amazing thing, without social media there would be zero change around the world and I feel like we need change for example, we know what happened to George Floyd and its disturbing and disgusting but without the video footage there would be no justice at all, the police would find an excuse and lie about what happened but now we found some type of justice for him, the cops in the video all been charged and that because of social media. Also it’s a great place to share information to the news and hopefully get more awareness that way. I also worked for an amazing company called “We Planet Earth” and they are amazing. Basically they help children in less fortunate places to go to school for the very first time and they use social media to help with funding. Also all those social media is great for communicating with friends and family and create a tighter bond if far from each other for example I live far from my parents and we use facebook video chat to talk almost everyday and I use snapchat to communicate with my friends on the daily, it’s also very good for entertainment purposes such as youtube and netflix. Personally the greatest thing I love about social media would have to be the self promoting aspect of it, it’s very useful for me, helps me grow and brings me more interaction with my music and posts.

Is Instagram the new Facebook?

Facebook use to be one of the biggest social media platforms in the world, starting in 2004 with only 650 users, by the early 2006 facebook hit 12 million users and by 2020 having a little bit more than 1.69 billion users, theres no doubt in anyones mind that facebook opened a lot of doors for other social media platforms one being instagram, which was released in 2010 with already 1 millions users. It’s easy to say that instagram started to make waves and facebook was dying down.

In April 9th 2012 facebook bought Instagram for 1 Billion $ and started making some small changes to make the app a little more modern and easy to use to connect with facebook if you want to promote your instagram post for higher results, all that while facebook was dying down. I sarted to realize that I was no longer using facebook and was using my instagram more often than I should, which brought me to think Instagram is the new Facebook, right? Everything i used to do on facebook like, writing a post and talking about my feeling or wanted to share something with my friends and family i can do on Instagram it just comes with a picture. Facebook now has around 1 billion monthly users compare to a massive 500 million per day for Instagram, no wonder Facebook wanted to buy that platform so bad, instagram is the modern platform for young teens, teen and even alduts, its a platform where you can easily see your favorite celebreties and in some way interact with them.

It is now easy to see, in a couple of years facebook will be no more and Instagram will grow exponentially than ever for the simple fact that most people want to connect with their favorite celebrities or just in general promote themselves better and Instagram is a great platform for that since theres a lot more celeb using that platorm these days.

References

(may 24th 2018) 2004 facebook users

https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/05/25/on-february-8th-2004-facebook-had-a-whopping-650-users/

(April 30th) 2020 facebook users

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/