Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Media

          Social media is like a daily consumption for human beings in this new era, especially in globalization. Almost everyday everyone is using social media. What do people use social media for? Are there any positive impacts or negative impacts of using them? Actually, by using social media people can share anything. Like what they do or what they see by sharing their photos, ideas, etc. Social media provides different resources such as e-mail and instant messages or usually we called “chatting”. So which one belongs to social media? Is it Google? No, it isn’t. but it’s true that Google provides an e-mail application but the function is different from social media. Google is a web that helps people to search information, while social media helps you to communicate with people. These days, there are more than a hundred social media application such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and Instagram. Those applications not only have the similarities but also the differences. All of them are used to share photo, moments, or what they do. But for Skype, it only can be used for chatting, voice call, and video call, but Instagram only for sharing photos. From those four types of application, they also have their advantages and disadvantages.

          The first application is Facebook. This is the most mainstream application of social media. Facebook is useful for finding long-lost friends and acquaintances. It’s also useful for creating groups and sharing information. You can post a status and get immediate responses from your friends. The more you have friends, the more responses you will get. Facebook let you chat and get to know your friends. It may let you share photos or videos, too. And the fact that unknown people can’t post messages, but have to be added as friends first is obviously a good way to avoid us from dangerous people. Facebook also gives you notifications about your friends’ birthday or anything you tagged in. Meanwhile, this application also has disadvantages. It’s difficult to find old status updates and conversation. So if it’s really important, you might have to remember either you like it or not. But the main problem with Facebook is if there’s someone who wants to meet you and you don’t know him/her, maybe there’s an evil thought inside him/her such as kidnapping. And this problem is very famous for children. Plus, if there’s someone who post pornography images, it can be seen by everyone, isn’t it? It’s really affect people’s mind into something bad, right?

          The second one is Twitter. This application is easier to use because it’s very simple. It also takes less than a minute to create an account and start “tweeting”. Different with Facebook, on Twitter we just have to fill our personal information such as name, user-ID, and the e-mail we use for registration. Twitter allows you to follow anyone and anyone can follow you. Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to accept someone’s friendship in order for them to see your updates. In fact, it’s really advantaging since we can follow celebrities even they don’t follow you back. Celebrities in Twitter are the real one, while Facebook sometimes are fake. But there are also the disadvantages. Twitter sometimes get overloaded and has trouble connecting since so many use it. Also, there are a lot of people try to gain many followers by purchasing fake software. Not only the application fails, but also marks the users as spam. By purchasing software, we don’t even know if it contains virus, right? Since virus is a hidden thing. For addition, on Twitter you can only tweeting and sharing photos nothing else you can do. How boring!

          The third application is Skype. Besides for chatting, Skype allows two people who may be thousands miles apart to communicate through video call. At first, Skype can only be used on computer or laptop, but right now this application can be downloaded onto iPhones and Android phones. For the basic version is free. But the bad thing is although the basic version is completely free, an internet service is needed to use this program. And if you want an unlimited calls to other country, cell phone callings, or SMS, you must pay for credit or buy the premium version of Skype.

The last one is Instagram. It’s different with any other application. Why? Because you can only share photos and videos, nothing else. Maybe for some people it’s very boring, but with someone who likes to capture a moment it’s really entertaining, moreover if you get “likes” from people you may know or don’t even know. And it’s very useful for photographers whether people like their picture or not. However, if you don’t want your photos to be seen or get liked by unknown people, you can protect your account and lock it so that they must follow your account first if they want to see it. You can also edit your photos by using Instagram’s filter and frames. But if you want to share videos, you only have 15 seconds to record it. The good side is Instagram rarely got crime activities if you don’t write your personal information. Although Instagram can improve your artistic abilities, for some people it controls their lives too much; they spend too much time on it and share private information that shouldn’t be uploaded onto the internet.

Overall, with so many applications of social media, all of them not only have the benefits but also the drawbacks. Social media are advantageous only if they are used correctly and wisely. In contrast, social media can also be the most effective way to do crimes in our society. Using these applications would be helpful if users do not spend time there unnecessarily.