by Jennifer Lajara
Photo By: Econsultacy.com
Social media has made a big impact on our lives. Since its invention, our lives have changed in good and bad ways.
Among good ways is the interaction with other people. With Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram it became easier for us to communicate with others who live overseas.
Fifteen years ago it was not that easy to communicate with people, and the easiest way was to talk by phone. Not everybody had a computer to communicate. Phone calls were the only choice.
Now that we have social media and smartphones we can Facetime each other and see each other during the conversation. It is a better way of communicating than before.
Social media helps keep people informed on current events. In the past, we relied on the TV news and newspapers, which may not have had up-to-the-minute news like what is available online today. Now, when something happens, we can see pictures and videos of everything. When an event happens anywhere in the world, we can see it right away on social media like on Facebook and Twitter where everybody posts everything and news and information go viral in minutes.
Social media has helped a lot of people make money. There are many YouTubers or "influencers" and people who have their own pages with a lot of followers and they get paid for everything they post. One example of this is American media personality Kim Kardashian, who gets paid $1 million reportedly for every post she makes on her Instagram account. Companies love to have her promote their products because they know for sure that a lot of people are going to buy it after she posted it in her account. The same thing happens with other personalities who had become popular on social media for different reasons and after they get a certain number of followers, they get paid for promoting products.
One of the biggest bad effects of social media is cyberbullying, where a lot of people get bullied for being different, or just because they have different opinions. In social media, some people believe that they have the right to treat others in a bad way or make others feel ashamed of who they are. There are a lot of people who had made bad decisions, just people many people on social media offend them. Social media is a way to express yourself and give your opinion in a good way, without offending others or making others feel bad about who they are as a person.
As humans, we must use social media in a good way, to share with others and be good to others, and not offend anybody, and lose track of our lives. Also, some of us spend many hours using our phones, without realizing that there are a lot of fun things to do.
We have just one life and must learn how to use social media in good ways and not let it take over our lives and make us forget what’s important or let it destroy us.