Social media has come to stay for good, and a huge population of this world lives on Social media, are we already creating a new “social-media-driven” world for ourselves?
You wouldn’t even be reading my article without the help of social media! As they say “everything has good and bad sides” Social media is here, with its merits and demerits, but first of all, what is social media?
Social media is a worldwide online platform that allows users to share certain interests and content according to the choice of the users, through the use of photos and videos. There are so many social media platforms, but here are a few examples; YouTube, Telegram, Tik Tok, WeChat, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, WhatsApp, Likee, etc.
Social media didn’t come alone; it came with its pros and cons which includes; reaching larger audiences for either social or business, creating personal/business brand(s), driving traffic to your website, which creates more users, and if a business, more sources of money, the creation of friends and/or business partners and it’s usually free
So as there are pros, and here are some cons for consideration; most times, content showed on most social media platforms are inappropriate in the viewers’ point of view, social media also decreases face-to-face interactions, damage to the body after some time due to excessive intake of radiation from screens and lights, lack of emotional skills, for instance; people tend to believe everything on social media. It changes the way they think and their entire emotional skills are destroyed/ non-existent.
Cyber-bullying a common on social media demerit, easy accessibility to personal and private content, it just takes a single button to press, and your personal information is on the internet. Social media can be time-consuming; workers/students can be on social media for more than 3 hours! These three hours can be used to create something productive for themselves or the organization or school the work or learn respectively.
Lastly, social media has been linked to a lot of car accidents, most drivers try to text and drive at the same time, with divided attention on the road and the gadget using at the same time, car accidents are likely to occur in this part of our “social-media-driven” world.
Analyzing various popular social media platforms such as: Instagram: Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social media platform owned by Facebook, and helps people get their name out there. Likee: Likee is a Singapore-based short video creation and sharing platform, available for iOS and Android operating systems.Tik Tok: Tik Tok is a video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company Byte Dance, used to make a variety of short-form videos that have a duration from three seconds to one minute.
Now the big question, why should/shouldn’t social media be disabled for a week?
In this era of our world, the disabling of social media will bring many people crashing down to the ground, and others won’t be bothered about it, but what will happen if social media is disabled for a week?
When social media platforms are disabled, it gives the family a full week to straighten our bends in the family and create special bonds like no other. Face-to-face communication can be renewed, the lesser use of social media means communication face-to-face is enhanced, it helps with eye-contact, reading of faces, etc. Productivity is increased and deadlines are easily met when the existence of social media is removed or reduced.
Disabling social media will just be chaos for some, and most businesses will suffer as today’s businesses keep in contact with its clients through various social media platforms. Great sources of the latest news events will be unseen for a week! Wow! Just picture a week without BBC, CNN, NBC, GTV, UTV, Ghana-Web, Joy FM, Peace FM, etc. Students’ and researchers’ works will be put on a week-long hold, where are the social media platforms to help you that research? They will be disabled and unable to use. What about entertainment, no more for a week, no more YouTube or any other entertainment social media platforms, life will be extremely boring.
In a nutshell, social media came and is with us till death, and there’s nothing we can do about it., but we can reduce the usage of it, and find other means of life and entertainment, without social media would have been boring, but with it as well, it creates a reserved world full of no communication, just texts, pictures and videos to explain emotions. Just imagine how it would be like without social media for a week.
By: Fransica Obenewaa Ampadu
A pupil of North Hills International School
Year 9
