The thesis statement of the essay is “The effects of social media depends upon how a person, people and the organizations use it.” In this essay the perks of social media is going to be discussed in detail. Everything has both of its positive and negative pictures, while discussing the perks we cannot ignore the negative side of social media that if this global platform is used in negative form what the consequences would be.

Social media can be taken as a blessing of the modern world. With social media the distances among people has seen to be vanished. With social media the world has become a global village and everyone has equal access to everything present on internet and online. Social media has made the social bonds even stronger. Any news of any country would take seconds to spread all over the world. It has become even easier for the researchers to access the information to their related topic that easily. Internet has totally changed the way we remember things. Talking about the academics thousands of videos are now available online in order to understand the complex structures of chemistry or to understand the anatomy of human body. Students now easily understand the graphic representations of economies different concepts or the structures of bridges. While using the internet it feels like the world is around you and you have access to every bit of it (Noe, 2011).

Human beings always used the social media and the technology in order to make new relations with people and to add diversity to their social circle. The space they share online, the bond, their activities can also be taken as sociomental because their connection with each other is interpersonal and is dependent on the virtual spaces rather than physical activity for its creation and maintenance (Houser, 2020).

Billions of people use social media in order to make new friends, new bonds, in order to understand others culture and the norms of their country and more specifically to calm their curiosities towards other parts of the world. With the help of this modern technology millions of people are earning online. The internet provides people with so much online earning opportunities that it become even easier for the people to do a home based job now.

Every things comes with a price and technology also has its pros and cons but we cannot just neglect the pros and on the basis of cons made a decision that technology and social media as a whole is bad for humans. Watching the movie “Snowden” was quite a new experience and I learnt a lot from it. People often complain about the fact that the Government is spying on them and that they do not have a private life anymore. I wanted to say that does privacy matters even if you are not secure? Does Government make a phone call to your home while you was watching porn and complaint your parents about it? Obviously NO! Because that’s not the job of Government and what their job is to protect you from terrorism and for that they keep a check and balance to every unusual activity happening online. And that has nothing to do with your privacy rather the sole duty of government is to protect you. Yes, I do agree that the movie showed us all that our whole life was being captured by the government but for what purpose? For our country’s protection.

Again at this point of conversation, I would repeat that the use of social media and technology depends for what purpose a person or an organization is using it. In one of the articles named the “The Next Big Focus in the Russia Investigation: Social Media” the author has stated that Facebook has acknowledged that it sold ads to some 500 fake Russia-linked accounts between 2015-2017 and what most alarming is that the ads addressed the socially divisive issues like gun control, immigration and race relations. It is also written in the statement that it may discover more (Lucas, 2017).

Same while reading the article: “The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism”, have given us the idea of what people have in their hands and how well they are using the technology. The author named Zuckerman stated in the article that “Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers. Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.” If a tool passes “cute cat” purposes, and is widely used for low-value purposes, it can be and likely is used for online activism, too.” And I totally agree with the author here, if people use the internet for their pleasures then there is need to understand that what this technology is capable to do and what do you have in your hand and you are not utilizing it in a proper manner (Wikipedia, 2020).

And same is the case with the politicians now. They are using social media for their own personal benefits. Every single person of the modern world knows the value of social media and how vast this network is. The politicians now use social media to run their campaigns and to spread the propagandas. The article “Longtime NBC Reporters Quits” has opened up a new fact door for all of us when a reporter from the NBC quit his career and said that the mass media has now become puppet in the hands of the President and the Trump free days are over for all of us (Arkin, 2019). And on such basis he quits his career after reading this I felt it so much that I really thought is it really happening to that level now? Yes it indeed is.

At last, I would conclude this discussion on the point that with every passing day the world of technology is growing so fast that we cannot stop it. We are and will enjoy the perks of social media and technology and for these perks we have to pay in the form of these false propagandas and the politicians’ personal interests. People of this era are so powerful as compared to the past ones and they know how to differentiate in between a fake and a genuine news. There is need for people to understand and make the right decisions not only for their personal lives but for their future and for their coming generations as well.

Works Cited:

1. Noe, Alva. “NPR Choice Page.” Cosmos and Cultures, 20 Sept. 2011, choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/09/20/140625802/google-is-not-making-you-stupid.
2. Houser, Kasey. “Chapter 3: ‘Inhabiting a Digital Environment.’” What Do You Hope to Learn as a Result of Taking This Class?, 6 Feb. 2020, kaseylynnhouser.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/chapter-3-inhabiting-a-digital-environment.
3. Lucas, Ryan. “NPR Choice Page.” NPR, 22 Sept. 2017, choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/2017/09/22/552726960/the-next-big-focus-in-the-russia-investigations-social-media.
4. Wikipedia contributors. “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism.” Wikipedia, 9 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_activism.
5. Arkin, William. “Longtime Reporter Leaves NBC Saying Media Is €œTrump Circus” That Encourages Perpetual War.” Democracy Now!, 1 Sept. 2019, http://www.democracynow.org/2019/1/9/longtime_reporter_leaves_nbc_saying_media.