Over the last few years the Internet and technology have expanded in terms of size, significance and importance. Throughout these last few years many different goals and accomplishments have surfaced into the world. Although there are many positives to the world of Internet and technology, every positive side has a negative side. One particular negative that has surfaced into the world due to the Internet and technology would be social media. There are quite a few social media sites that have influenced the world greatly through both positive but mostly negative events. A few of these social media sites, the more popular one’s would be referred to as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Vine. There are multiple different media sites aside from the aforementioned one’s that fall into this category, but these are the most popular social media sites currently in the vast world that we live in. There is one thing I’ve always said when it comes to social media it would be that: “Social Media can be a horrible influence on society”. Moving forward, in the next few entries of this essay I will talk about two articles that support my claim, give feedback from two people who I have asked the personal question “Do you feel that social media has a negative impact on the world?”, and finally I will present a few flaws in my belief that social media is a bad influence.

Any normal person would believe that social media is anything but dangerous. The problem with social media is that even though it allows you to communicate with others over vast different areas of the world, social media can also be the cause of negative events and outcomes to surface. One big example of this would stem from an article titled: “The Effect of Bad News and CEO Apology of Corporate on User Responses in Social Media”. Much like the title suggest, bad news was a primary factor that lead to multiple causalities for a certain company. When I say bad news, I mean a piece of information that was left on a social media site that at the time seemed harmless but later it blew up in the companies face when it spread to vast different parts of the world under their radar. The part in the article goes as follows: “The unpredictable, cascading feature of corporate crisis in social media is at its butterfly effect: It likely starts with a single message in a network but spread to global-scale eventually leading to a devastating consequence for the business at risk.” It is exactly as the article states, one little rumor or false tale of mischief can certainly destroy a company if consumers believe these stories. Whether the story is actually true or false is irrelevant since it all depends on whether the consumer chooses to believe it or not. Companies are easily the most affected by social media in this regard and will do anything to keep their consumers faithful. The first article I read also goes into detail about an event that relates to this statement: “The Papa John’s Pizza Crisis in 2012” that started with a single message on Twitter from a Korean-American customer in New York, who was furious to find a note “lady chinky eyes” written on her receipt by a cashier. Through her negative recounting of the event on Twitter, a local newspaper picked up the story and the news went to national newspapers as well as international news media like CNN within a few days. Papa John’s fired the cashier, sent out a public apology, and even the Papa John’s branch in Korea apologized to Korean customers.” She was merely ranting about a distasteful individual and a newspaper happened to pick up the story which ended up forcing the store to remove the hostile party and apologize to the offended Korean woman. Social media can indeed be a scary thing when used improperly or even by mistake. The main point is that social media can cause companies, societies, organizations, etc, to deal with more complicated issues then necessary. In the next article titled “Social Media for Law Enforcement: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” the article actually covers both positive and negative sides of the story, but the thing to pay attention to is the section called “the Ugly”. What had basically happened was the article stated that Social Media can be a tactical problems for most police departments. In the article, social media was basically in a sense keeping tabs on the police and what they were doing which gave problems to the police and ruined their extensive setup schemes to capture culprits. So the Police Departments had literally asked people to stop posting and talking about where and what they were doing to avoid these problems. As you can see, social media can even be the cause for the police being unable to perform their own jobs. This is a problematic task at hand that will surely worsen over the years to come.

I decided to interview one of my close friends who wishes to stay anonymous so I will refer to him as “Mr. T”. I asked him one main question to answer for me: “Do you feel that social media has a negative impact on the world?” His response was actually pretty lengthy and it goes as so: “I believe that Social Media has had a negative although while beneficial side to existence when you consider its impact on the world. Due to the wideness of the World Wide Web and how we are able to reach out and socialize with anyone in the globe, it is a powerful opportunity for others to connect to those outside of their own lives, towns, or cities. However, Social Media does have a dark side. It grants the ability of consistent exposure. Your private information whether it be through emails or signing up for social media related websites like Twitter or Facebook provides a security risk for your information to be breached and accessed by another person; someone you don’t know. Social media has provided the means for another form of exposure and that is the ability to voice one’s opinion about anything the topic may be. Everything and I mean everything you comment on or view can be seen by someone else more importantly it could be someone you don’t even know. It has created the existence of Cyber bullying; consistent harassment or humiliation through the use of social networking.” As Mr. T states, although social media itself can be a beneficial factor, it definitely has a dark more rough side. Like the example he used, cyber bullying. Cyber bullying sounds pretty silly from just reading the term, but it should not be overlooked because of the word “Cyber”. Cyber bullying is the same as bullying someone in real life through the use of media over the Internet and sometimes it can be far worse than bullying someone in real life. There have been many cases where people have committed suicide from cyber bullying because the attacker causes them to become too stressed out over life that they end their own lives themselves. Unlike real life bullying, in the hands of an expert the cyber bully can get away with being the cause of someone’s suicide and not being found out by cops. The reason for this is because of hacking and IP changing. Normal conventional means of tracking the source computer who wrote messages to said individual is to check their computers IP Address which would allow authorities full information on the whereabouts of individual. But as times have changed, hackers have found ways to avoid detection like VPN’s, proxy networks and even changing their IP Address to match another countries. Other social media issues stem from individuals themselves who post disturbing and unwanted images and videos. As I’ve said, social media has a huge set of negatives that impact society.

I also decided to interview my father on the same concept. I asked him the same question that I asked my friend: “Do you feel that social media has a negative impact on the world?” It took my father a while to think about it but his reply went as followed: “I’ve been alive for a while, over fifty years at this point and I never would have expected the world to change as much as it has to this day. In regards to your question… Yes, I do feel that social media has had a negative impact on the world as we know it. Back in the day we used to do everything by hand like writing up a letter then putting it in an envelope and shipping it to someone you care about as you wait for the next few days for a reply. Those were replaced with emails and I can’t argue with those, I love the invention of emails. The problem with social media is that it has too many openings. You know when you watch a fighting show and the main character says the opponent has a weakness or they look for an opening to break their guard? You can apply that to social media. Social media, while it looks fun, strong and sturdy has many gaping holes in it. Through these holes everything negative seeps out and slowly travels throughout the Internet preparing itself to poison all viewers of the world. It’s like they say, every positive has a negative and every negative has a positive. In this case however, I would say there is more negatives than positives.” My father makes some good points. He doesn’t feel that social media as a whole is completely corrupt and irritable but rather he acknowledges that it has many bothersome negatives within it.

Now that I’ve stated my opinion on the matter of social media, I will have to admit that there are some positives to using it. For starters, social media is a good way of communicating with others not only through text but even through speech. Programs like Skype that allow users to either send instant private messages or talk to each other manually through the use of built in computer microphones or external microphones. Video and image sharing is another great addition from social media. You can submit an article, video or image to others publicly on a domain such as Facebook for some constructive criticism. Artist are better able to express themselves through social media because they do not have to be a Hollywood star or child prodigy to get their works submitted and posted to a gallery. And finally, social media sites are a good leeway to advertise works like new company products, games, toys and various other projects and products.

To bring everything together, as you can tell I am not very keen on the idea of social media. While I do believe that social media itself isn’t necessarily a horrible product of the growing times, I do believe that it has many casualties hidden behind its “safe” demeanor. I’m going to be honest here and state that I did not always think negatively about social media. But, as time started to go by and I started to grow older and my brain started to grow with both my body size and mental logic I came to the conclusion that social media isn’t always good for you. There are people who commit suicide, threatened institutions, post disturbing and undermining pictures and create absolutely atrocious videos that are posted and show them to everyone in the world. Some videos are even making fun of people with disabilities and others who view the videos end up commenting some rather rude things about it. If they were in the same boat as most of these individuals they wouldn’t be laughing, and if they would be laughing then I don’t believe they are a mentally sane person to begin with. Overall, social media has its upsides and downsides.

Works Cited

Kim, Hoh, et al. “The Effect Of Bad News And CEO Apology Of Corporate On User Responses In Social Media.” Plos ONE 10.5 (2015): 1-21. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.

“Social Media: Law Enforcement Tool – Public Safety – LexisNexis.” Public Safety. N.p., 01 Oct. 2014. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.

Casseus, Mario. Personal Interview. 1 December. 2015.

Mr., T. Personal Interview. 9 December. 2015.