Vol.

2 Issue-12, August 2022 (e-ISSN: 2582-8223)

Impact of Social Media on Society

Sahil Boora1 and Rohit2
1
PG Student, Department of Sociology, CCS HAU, Hisar-125004 (Haryana)
2
Research Scholar, Department of Extension Education, CCS HAU, Hisar-125004 (Haryana)

ARTICLE ID: 001

ICT has changed rapidly over the past years, with a key development of emergence of
social media.The pace of change in our society is continuously increasing i.e., the
development of mobile has played an important role in shaping the impact of social media.
Across the globe, mobile devices dominate in terms of total minutes spent online and the
means to connect anywhere, at any time on any device in everyone’s hands.
Knowledge is power, we all recognize this saying but few understand the empowering
role social media has played, anyone online is empowered by an unrestricted flow of
information to add to their knowledge bank. In today's conditions of the society, it is
undeniable fact that social media has played an important role in impacting our culture,
economy and overall view of the world. Social media is a forum that brings people at a digital
space to exchange idea, connect with, relate to, seek advice, and offer guidance. Social media
has removed barriers of communication and created decentralized communication channel
and this has opened the door for all to have a voice and participate in a democratic method
including people in repressive countries. It enables common interest-based groups such as
students to work in a collaborative group project outside of their class. It encourages
creativity and collaboration with a large range of commentators or specialist on a number of
issues such as education,economy, politics, health, relationships…etc.
We can also define social media as websites and applications that enable users to
create and share content or to participate in social networking. It is flow of information that
one can easily add to their knowledge.It has brought many benefits to human society by
allowing us to easily connect digitally with friends and family members around the world. It
alsobreak down international borders and cultural barriers.
Social media is a powerful digital revolution that has changed our lives all round;
 It has changed the way that we socialise,
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 Conduct our businesses,

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Vol. 2 Issue-12, August 2022 (e-ISSN: 2582-8223)

 Engage in political affairs,

 Build professions and set job recruitments.
Definitions of social media
 Social media are the applications that enable people to interact with each other and
build social networks.
 Social media describes how individuals can distribute their messages to lacs of
people, encouraging them to build strong connections and firm loyalty.
 Social media is the use of Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, My Space and LinkedIn for the
purpose of communication, sharing photos as well as videos.
Social media can be also a source of disorder or deficit. Sander and Thomas (2013) in their
study identified two types of deficits:
 Cultural, social-psychological and cognitive: forms of “Attention Deficit (Disorder)”
 Business and Economic: forms of “Financial Deficit”
Now a days Majority of adolescent is shifting from electronic media like as television
viewers and radio listeners to the social media among all age of group very rapidlydue to
their limited capacity for self-regulation and sensitivity to peer pressure, teenagers are at
some risk as they navigate and experiment with social media. Research carried out in recent
times indicates that there are frequent online expressions of offline behaviours, such as
bullying, clique-forming, and sexual experimentation, that have introduced problems such as
cyber bullying, privacy issues, sexting, addiction and concurrent sleep sickness. (Patchin et
al., 2006).
Current Scenario and Positive Impact
One of the most well-known social media sites, Face-book, has 1.4 billion users
around the globe, nearly twenty per cent of the earth population, thus helping us to better
understand, learn and share information. Social media networks have removed all the barriers
of communication and interaction, and now one can communicate his/herthoughts or feelings
over a variety of topics. Students and experts are now able to share and communicate with
like-minded persons and can ask for the opinion on a particular topic.
Another positive impact of social media is to unite people on a huge digital platform
and we know that unity of people is very important to bring the positive change in society.
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Social media are also used to document memories, learn about and explore new things,

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Vol. 2 Issue-12, August 2022 (e-ISSN: 2582-8223)

advertise oneself and make new friends. For instance, it is claimed that the communication or
interaction through Internet based services can be done more privately than in real life. These
are some of the content creation activities that individuals take part in these social media
sites: Writing material, such as text or online comments on social media etc.:
 Face-book: 65% of Internet users do this
 Sharing digital photos: 55% users do that
 Contributing rankings and reviews of products or services: 37%
 Creating "tags" for content, such as tagging songs by genre: 33%
 Posting comments on third-party websites or blogs: 26%
 Taking online material and remixing it into a new creation: 15% of Internet users do
this with photos, video, audio, or text
 Creating or working on a blog: 14%
Survey conducted (in 2015) by Pew Internet Research shows that the Internet users
among American younger generation who use at least one social media has increased from
10% to 76% since 2005.
Negative Impacts
Social media have negative effects on peoples' self-esteem. Individuals compare their
own lives with the lives of their friend circle through their posts. Individuals are motivated to
portray themselves in a way that is appropriate to their economic and social situation. Often
the things posted on internet are the healthy and positive aspects of people's lives, making
other people question why their own lives are not as exciting or fulfilling as that other life.
This can lead to depression and other self-esteem issues. Girls generally show more emotion
in their social media posts and more frequently change their profile pictures, which according
to some psychologists can lead to self-objectification. On the other hand, the researchers
found that boys prefer to portray themselves as strong, independent, and powerful. For
example, men often post pictures of objects and not themselves, Girls generally post more
images that include themselves, friends and things.
 Social media or network leads to addiction. Spending countless hours on the social
sites can divert the focus and attention from a particular task. It lowers the
motivational level of the people
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 Kids can be greatly affected by these social networking sites if they are allowed to use
them.
 Another downside of the social media is that the user shares too much information
which may pose threats to them.
 Social media has a negative impact on our lives because the combination of isolation
and global reach.
Implications
 Using of social media in responsible way for predetermined objective or goal is vital.
For students who cannot manage themselves, education plays significant role.
Providing awareness creation for example, the presence of social media addiction
might save them from different effects.
 We can agree that information is power, but if it is used inappropriately, it might
exploit our life style. So, parents should closely supervise and control while their
children are using social media. Due to its cheap cost and availability and expansion
of smart cell phone, many adolescents and children are using social media for a long
period of time. This adversely affects their academic achievement.
 Societies are using social media in religious institution, political meetings, in
academic settings in the classroom while teachers are even teaching. In general, from
root level to government all should have to work to save our culture from this media
especially from Facebook.
Conclusion
Social media in today’s world plays an important role in individual life and in the
society also, it has various positive impacts i.e., benefit of rapid information sharing and also
some negative impacts on society i.e., social media enables people to create false identities
and superficial connections, causes depression. In this article, I have explored the positive
and negative impacts and implications of social media. This uncensored and unmonitored
new medium of communication which exposes us all to a gradual breakdown of social
cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems, unless we take responsibility to
ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with
what's happening in the world.
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