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The Impact of Social Media on Society

The landscape of the virtual world today is drastically different than that a decade ago.

Since the invention of Facebook in 2006 and the rise of social media that followed

immediately after it, individuals of any age and social status have got the opportunity to share

thoughts, emotions, news, and media files at a previously unimaginable speed. Social media

can be defined as the communication within a network of people. A recent study conducted

by Pew Research Center showcased that 65% percent of adult Americans used social media

last year – an almost tenfold increase compared to 2005. The popularity of social networks is

the highest among the young adults – 90% of persons aged between 18 and 29 use Facebook

or similar websites (Perrin). Many studies have been undertaken in order to estimate how

social networks influence one’s personality, academic performance, political and social

activity, physical and mental health etc. Some researchers assert that social networking

boosts negative behaviors and wastes time. Other scholars, however, believe it may help

individuals to develop social skills and serve as an impulse for taking a more proactive stance

in life (Wang, Chen & Liang). For their own benefit or not, many use websites like Twitter,

Facebook, and What’s App on a regular basis. This paper will discuss the impacts of social

media on some of the major aspects of the lives of modern citizens.

Social media is highly trendy among college students. According to 2010 research,

almost a quarter of students’ time on the web is spent in the social media (Wang, Chen &

Liang). Facebook dominates the popularity list of the most widespread social networks,

followed by Twitter and YouTube. Globally, Facebook has over 1.55 billion active users, half

of whom log in on a daily basis. On average, students spend nearly two hours a day in the
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social networks. In 2007, portion of American students who had a Facebook account was

already impressive – 92%. By 2008, the number of users reached 99% (Wang, Chen &

Liang). Keeping in mind that the service became available only in 2006, this is an amazing

statistics.

One of the positive sides of social media is that it can be utilized for academic

purposes. Being easily accessible, online communities can offer numerous benefits for young

individuals, such as providing a virtual platform for sharing thoughts and ideas with

colleagues, enabling easy and fast access to academic support, and enhancing computer

knowledge and online communication skills. Moreover, students who are shy to present their

thoughts in the class receive an opportunity to participate in discussions via blogs and virtual

societies.

On the contrary, findings in a number of studies suggest that the time spent in social

networks is in inverse relation with academic grades (Wang, Chen & Liang). Jacobsen and

Forste revealed that over 60% of the students use electronic media while in college, when

studying, or while preparing for the class. As a result of such multimodal activity and,

respectively, constant distraction, academic performance significantly deteriorates. While the

on-line communities like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube grow in popularity, they

also serve as time traps for students who tend to procrastinate with assignments because of

their busy virtual lives. For instance, in one survey with 102 students, two thirds confessed

that social networking curbs their productivity.

Speaking of the correlation between achievements in college and electronic media, a

report published by Ohio State University indicates that scholars who are active Facebook
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users dedicate fewer hours to education and, therefore, have fewer chances to succeed

academically (Kalpidou, Costin, & Morris). Furthermore, their grade-point averages are

substantially lower than in students who do not utilize social networks. However, no

considerable difference in grades was revealed between heavy and light social media usage,

as well as no correlation was identified between academic scores and certain media

platforms. Twitter “inhabitants” are virtually as successful at school as those who favor

Google+.

Teenagers of today are frequently referred to as a “digital generation” (Buckingham,

p. 1). Technology has invaded their lives and altered the way they think and perceive the

world. However, what the youngsters do on-line may be considered to be the virtual

extension of their real life activities, such as communicating with friends, sharing gossips,

blaming school for all hardships, flirting, and bragging. Nill et al. claims that technological

advancements accelerate the collapse of boundaries between the private and public. What is

one’s private information can easily become available for the wide audience of peers for fun.

Analogously, a routine quarrel between two students at school can develop into the virtual

space bullying and, eventually, find repercussion back at school in a form of an even more

aggravated conflict. Similarly, a heated exchange of posts or a biting status on Facebook can

escalate into the real life conflict or even get physical.

It is not a secret that young people pay special attention to the image of self. There

will always be those who are more popular with the peers and those who are considered

underdogs. Hence, it seems logical that communication with peers may sometimes transform

into a virtual combat exactly how it happens offline; life in the internet, same as life out of it,
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holds opportunities for strengthening interpersonal closeness or breeding hostility. Where

virtual interaction involves victimization, the term “cyberbullying” applies (Levy et al.). In

the US survey conducted by Espelage and Low, it was found that up to one third of social

media users aged 11 to 19 suffered from online bullying at least once, and one in six of them

confessed they had practiced cyberbullying against peers. A similar Canadian research

indicated that 25% of high school students reported of having been cyberbullied. In 2014,

Australians Heerde and Hemphee came to a conclusion that 5% of teenagers conduct

cyberbullying while the same 5% are cyberbullied (Nilan et al.).

Harassment, even though virtual, may have serious implications. Suicides committed

because of online bullying are registered on a yearly basis. In fact, the major known effects of

cyberbullying barely differentiate from those of offline harassment. Moral attacks in the

social media reflect in emotional numbness, lowered self-esteem, poor class attendance, poor

academic achievement, and reduced ability to start new friendships. Respectively, schools are

highly interested in curbing the effects of peer cyberbullying, frequently regarded as fraught

with consequences more severe than face-to-face harassment. They are willing to uncover the

disturbers and use measures against them. Some schools have even deployed discipline

policies that detect online bullying (Nilan et al.). Teachers control the implementation of the

policy by encouraging pupils to report of the cases of online victimization by fellows.

However, such policies often fail to effectively recognize the true perpetrators. The

first impediment is that virtual interaction between teenagers involves interlocutors they also

know offline, and, therefore, it is rarely possible to isolate online from online harassment

since they tend to be extensions of each other. Secondly, identifying cyberbullying is difficult
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because there is no strict definition of it. In support of this argument, a survey reported that

high school teachers and pupils comprehend the term “cyberbullying” very differently (Nilan

et al.). Finally, social networks are much more popular among the students than among the

teachers, and the latter are often left behind when it comes to social media technology.

Today, social networks play a crucial role in businesses, both for private and publicly-

held companies. Social media improves corporate responsibility, extends social listening,

boosts sales, and helps to understand the consumer needs better. Private companies and

enterprises tend to utilize social media within the framework of a much wider programs,

structures, and processes. Private business that have already incorporated a social media

component into their innovative marketing and selling strategy, enjoy significant competitive

advantage compared to the rival companies who have not yet started using virtual

communities in their business models.

Social networking enables private corporations to get closer to consumers by the

feedback mechanism. Goods and services of the company can be rated and commented upon

using Facebook or Google+ as a platform for complaints and suggestions. Social media

brings more dynamics, innovation, and experiment in the business. For that reason, the

majority of leading corporations increase spending on the online exploration projects and, in

some cases, create the entire social media exploration divisions (Blanco).

What is even more important, social networks erode and wither the concept of

monopoly in the business world and give more value to the consumer’s opinion and

feedback. Social media today is in the avant-garde of the corporate innovation and

development. Its influence and decisive power can merchandise and sell goods and services
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to the households directly from the office. Social networks have caused a revolution in the

corporate marketing and introduced a new, much more powerful platform for promotional

campaigns.

Political powers have broad opportunities to benefit from the online platforms such as

Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ via increased interaction between their members. Examples

of successful social media implementation into the political marketing strategies are the

promotional campaigns of Ségolène Royal, Howard Dean, and Barack Obama. These

politicians have effectively utilized social networks to make their colleagues more socially

engaged. In the case of the current US president, the members with higher degree of

engagement took a more active stance in the campaign and contributed more to the party. In

the case of Ségolène Royal, party membership jumped from 120,000 to over 200,000

members, 90% of whom had not been politically active before (Reddick & Aikins). The 2011

‘‘Arab Spring’’ is another bright demonstration of the growing significance of social media.

During the Arab revolution, opinions of people, who would otherwise be ignored, could reach

all corners of the globe.

Academic studies are consistent in their results that individuals who are heavy social

media consumers are more likely to be politically and civically engaged. In times when an

increasing portion of public’s attention is directed towards online communities like Twitter

and Facebook, scientists are aiming to measure the degree of interconnection between public

engagement and social media usage. The Arab revolution and Obama’s presidential

campaigns multiplied interest in social networking and political activism, though, the data

still remains insufficient to draw conclusions.

The most large-scale project designed to investigate the issue dates back to 2012,

when a study featured in the journal Nature revealed that posts on Facebook users’ feeds can

considerably impact voting patterns. The exploratory data, collected and processed jointly

with Facebook data scientists, indicated that certain posts shared by friends triggered activity

in nearly 60,000 voters. Furthermore, the additional 280,000 voters were involved indirectly

through social contagion. Hence, Facebook posting, sharing, and re-sharing generated

340,000 extra votes (Wihbey). Social media friends who also had bonds offline were discov-

ered to have considerably more influence than casual online acquaintances.

At present, there are dozens of studies investigating the impacts of social media web-

sites on one’s character, personality, and behavior, but separating common features is diffi-

cult. Usually, the researchers rely on specific datasets, conduct massive surveys on a vast ar-

ray of questions and evaluate the outcomes. In 2015, a massive analytical work published in

Information, Communication & Society provided a consolidated report on over 30 smaller

studies investigating the correlation between the social media usage and anything from public

engagement to measurable actions like protesting or voting. Some of them focused on

teenage populations, others - on the popularity of social media websites in various parts of the

world. In these 30 studies, 170 artificial indices were implemented. The chief coordinator of

the meta-study, professor Grant from MacEwan University in Canada, remarks that all the

studies are grounded on self-reported surveys, with the number of participants ranging from

250 to over 1,500. All of the studies were not older than 2008.

Here are the key findings:

 On the basis of the data analyzed, the relation between the use of social networks and partici-

pation in election campaigns seems to be generally weaker than the relation between social

media and civic engagement.

 Of all the factors studied, 81% proved a positive relation between virtual networking and

some display of political or social activity or participation. However, only a half of the estab-

lished relations were statistically significant. The most considerable impacts were observed in

studies with young populations.

 Furthermore, gauging participation as a form of protest activity is more likely to bring posi-

tive results, but the statistical significance of indices compared to other types of participation

is unlikely to be higher.

 Overall, the results do not answer the question whether social media possesses a transforma-

tive power or is just one of the many triggers. Since very few studies utilize experimental de-

sign, where investigators could juxtapose a treatment cohort with a control cohort, it is not

easy to prove the relationship of cause and effect (Whibey).

Experts claim that children who spend three hours per day on the websites like What’s

App and Facebook are twice more likely to suffer from mental deficiency than those who do

not use social media (Jamieson). While only one in nine teenagers who do not visit social net-

works have signs of mental disorder, figures reach one in four among heavy social media

users. Specialists suggest such children are at risk of delayed social and psychical develop-

ment since they spend too much time in virtual reality.

Furthermore, adolescents who spend more time outside tend to be happier and

healthier overall. With the growing popularity of online communities, children prefer to stay
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at home than play outdoors, which explains the increasing incidence of depression and

obesity. Moreover, screen light puts excessive strain on the eye. The commonest clinical signs

of eye fatigue include irritation, problems with focusing, diplopia, sensitivity to light, and dry

eyes. Long hours in front of the computer may also lead to short-sightedness or myopia – the

incapability to see objects from the distance. As a result, these children become dependent on

glasses.

Finally, social networking is highly addictive; an average teenager finds it hard to

restrain from the temptation to log in into Facebook account and check if his or her freshly

posted photo with a brand-new iPhone has received another “like”. According to one

American survey, most adolescents spend almost nine hours on entertaining media, and one

third of that time they spend on social networking (Shapiro). A similar research carried out in

the UK has indicated that children between 8 and 18 years of age use social networks for at

least 27 hours per week (Springer). Virtual accounts become fully integrated in one’s life,

sometimes to the extent that they replace face-to-face conversations almost entirely. Living

too much online is detrimental to real life communication.

The era of social media that started with the invention of Facebook in 2006 has

introduced a new mode of communication and transferred millions into the electronic reality.

Today, social networks penetrate almost every aspect of one’s routine. Social media is

associated with an enormous variety and diversity of impacts. While it clearly affects one’s

health and reduces productivity, it also has the power to change history by pushing citizens to

partake in elections or prompting leaders of huge multinational corporations to employ social

media experts in order to improve their marketing campaigns.

Works Cited

Blanco, Denis. 'Social Media: An Integrative Review on its Impact on Business and Higher

Education'. 20th Annual European Council for Business Education (ECBE)

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Buckingham, Donald. 'Is There a Digital Generation?'. Digital Generations: Children Young
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People and New Media. Donald Buckhingham and Richard Willett. 1st ed. London:

Routledge, 2015. 1-18. Print.

Jacobsen, Wade C., and Renata Forste. 'The Wired Generation: Academic and Social

Outcomes of Electronic Media Use among University Students'. Cyberpsychology,

Behavior, and Social Networking 14.5 (2011): 275-280. Web.

Jamieson, Sophie. 'Excessive Social Media Use Harms Children's Mental Health'. The

Telegraph 2015. Print.

Kalpidou, Maria, Dan Costin, and Jessica Morris. 'The Relationship Between Facebook And

The Well-Being Of Undergraduate College Students'. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and

Social Networking 14.4 (2011): 183-189. Web.

Levy, Norman et al. Bullying In a Networked Era: A Literature Review. Berkman Research

Center, 2012. Print.

Nilan, Paul et al. 'Youth, Social Media, and Cyberbullying among Australian Youth: "Sick

Friends"'. Social Media + Society 1.2 (2015): n. pag. Web.

Perrin, Andrew. Social Media Usage: 2005-2015. Pew Research Center, 2015. Print.

Reddick, Christopher G, and Stephen Kwamena Aikins. Web 2.0 Technologies and

Democratic Governance. New York, NY: Springer, 2012. Print.

Shapiro, Jordan. 'Teenagers in the U.S. Spend About Nine Hours A Day In Front Of A

Screen'. Forbes 2015: 1-2. Print.

Springer, Elizabeth. 'Teenagers Spend 27 Hours a Week Online: How Internet Use Has

Ballooned In The Last Decade'. The Telegraph 2015. Print.

Wang, Qingya, Wei Chen, and Yu Liang. 'The Effects Of Social Media On College Students'.

Johnson&Wales University, 2011. Print.

Wihbey, John. 'How Does Social Media Use Influence Political Participation and Civic

Engagement? A Meta-Analysis - Journalist's Resource'. Journalist's Resource.

2015. Web. 5 Dec. 2015.