Lately the news has been filled with articles and segments emphasizing the negative impacts of social media on our lifestyle, security, and culture. Recent events have given us plenty of reasons to be weary of social media, but in honor of this year’s Social Media Day we wanted to highlight and talk about the many positive influences social media has on our lives, culture, and relationships.
It connects people.
Connecting people has always been the core purpose of social media. It allows us to connect with people over long distances and interact with people from different cultures. We all know the lessons of “stranger danger” and “catfishing”, but when used safely, social media brings people together. You can keep in touch with traveling family members, friends who live across the world, and interact with new people who you wouldn’t have ever met otherwise.
Our world has expanded.
We’re exposed to more information than ever before and can easily connect with events happening all across the world. You can log on to Twitter and see what’s trending in London right now. You can get on Snapchat and watch videos of people at Carnival in Venice. You can scroll through Instagram and see photos from people at a lagoon in Iceland or petting koalas in Australia.
It’s a creative outlet.
Social media allows people to express themselves freely and cultivate a space of their own on the internet. Networks like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Tumblr completely run on their users’ creativity and imaginative content. They continually encourage innovation and thinking “outside the box”.
It’s our new “newspaper”.
Social media makes important, breaking news far more accessible than it was before the age of technology. When something happens in the world, the news is broken digitally within minutes. Twitter and Facebook may be full of fake news stories on your “friends” timelines, but if you look in the right places, social media is basically a real-time, digital newspaper.
Social Media Marketing
We may be a tad bit biased, but the emergence of social media marketing is fantastic. It allows businesses to reach out to greater, targeted audiences faster and more efficiently. The days of relying on TV advertisements and cold calls is in the past. Social media allows businesses to build a digital brand and grow their market to new heights.