Social media friend or foe?

Social media has taken over the world as we know it in personal and business so is this a good thing or a bad thing?

In my opinion social media is a great way to communicate but I feel that our lives have been taken over by this phenomenon. You can’t walk out the door without seeing or hearing something about social media.

Pros of social media

Social network allows you to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. It helps to build relationships with people from different generations as they can use social media as a common ground. (You can now chat with your granny about Facebook and Twitter who would have thought)

Businesses have used social media to their advantage by advertising and communicating with their customer. It is cheaper that traditional advertising and offers consumers a chance to interact with their favourite brands and companies are.

Social media and internet for that matter have made consumer lives simpler as you can so all your shopping with one click on your computer (which is awesome for someone like me who hates having to be in malls when it is so busy)

The list of pros for social media could go on and on but luckily I only have to mention a few

Cons of social media

Que the boo’s yes social media might seem like the best thing to happen to our boring existence but just as everything have pros to it our “can do no wrong “social media sites have cons to it.

With all these different social media site such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth, friendships, relationships in all aspects have really become “social mediaships” (yes I made up that word) gone are the days when guys would court the woman who catches their eye with beautiful poems and flowers and awkward shy conversation now one gets a “hey are u on Instagram or hey follow me on Twitter and I would follow you”.

For someone who has never heard of Twitter having people follow would be so creepy they would run for the hills.

The power of advertising and product success has shifted from the marketer or business to the consumer. Consumers operate in communities and value the opinions of their family and friends rather than the word of the advertisers or people pushing the product.

For example you purchase a certain product and you find it doesn’t hold up to their promises you quickly log onto one of the million social media sites out there and complain and research has shown that negative product reviews get more attention than positive product reviews and consumers can gang up and tear down that product and people follow and could even boycott using that product.

Whether you think social media is a friend or foe the one thing I want people to take away from this article is that social media or internet should never replace the human interaction mankind is required and always use these platforms to their fullest potential and most importantly PLEASE USE SOCIAL MEDIA WISELY because criminals and your parents could be watching your profiles closely.