Does social media rule you?

SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE SOCIETY
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Social Media Use in the Society
Social media is developing into a significant part of life by using the online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn among others. It is therefore not surprising that almost everyone is using such platforms to interact and connect with other people using the internet. Individuals perceive the use of the social media within the society as either having good or bad influence on the users. Research studies have shown that teenagers spend almost nine hours on a daily basis using the social media, which translates to more than one-third of the day. Findings have also indicated that Facebook users spend an average of 50 minutes in a day using the website (Correa, Hinsley, and De Zuniga 2010, p.249).
Critics have continuously suggested that increased use of social media in the society is having a negative influence on the social lives. Some argue that social media has encouraged users to utilize computers and mobile handsets to express their views on social problems within the society without participating actively in campaigns in the real world. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that social media use has made it possible for people to interact with friends and relatives who are away from them.
Social media use has facilitated instant access to information through social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

It has promoted widespread connectivity among users. For instance, it is possible for users to send a text message, tweet or Facebook message to another person who is not available for communication through a phone call (Correa, Hinsley, and De Zuniga 2010, p.249). Social media websites have also promoted the use of globalized voices through image sharing, the creation of blogs that are easily remarkable and noticeable enabling self-expression. Hashtags on Twitter have been used to highlight trending issues within the society revolutionizing the culture of online discussions. The various social media websites are serving an essential function in globalizing small businesses by helping their concepts and grow into successful enterprises.
The social media use in the society has also contributed to several adverse effects on the community. Its extensive use has led to rising narcissism where users selfishly post their selfies on the social websites to brag about themselves. The use of social media in the political environment has led to the spread of tirades or verbal attacks that may provoke violence among people. Social media has encouraged online offenders to hide behind anonymity using fake user accounts to conduct fraud activities and cyberbullying (Burke, Marlow and Lento 2010). The rise of hashtags activists in the social media has reduced the engagement of people in real life activism to fight for issues affecting the society. Social media use has also led to the amplification of ignorance witnessed for instance through sharing of hateful, misinformed, confusing as well as delusional tweets on the Twitter platform.
The use of social media promotes the creation of alternative personas for users who mostly possess more than one accounts of social networking that serve different interests or ventures (Gosling, Augustine, Vazire, Holtzman and Gaddis 2011, p.484). For instance, social media users are forced to split their persona into multiple personas to inhabit multiple communities within the social media platforms. Social media also tempts users to reveal their hidden identities to the rest of the world if they choose to do so. This habit favors the development of alternative personas in their interactions with the online community. The creation of such personas may have social ramifications on the users that make it difficult for them to be honest persons offline.
References
Correa, T., Hinsley, A.W. and De Zuniga, H.G., 2010. Who interacts on the Web? The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), pp.247-253.Burke, M., Marlow, C. and Lento, T., 2010, April. Social network activity and social well-being. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1909-1912). ACM.
Gosling, S.D., Augustine, A.A., Vazire, S., Holtzman, N. and Gaddis, S., 2011. Manifestations of personality in online social networks: Self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(9), pp.483-488.