"Social Media is What you Make of It"

Ever since the creation of social media, there has been a debate: is social media good or bad for you? I chose to look at an article and decide for myself whether or not social media is good or bad for me and if it is worth my time.  I went to the website: socialmediatoday.com, and looked at the article: "Is Social Media a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?".  The writer points out that there are many answers to this question and rightly so, says that there are very good and bad things about social media, and decides to take a neutral position, basically saying that social media can be good or bad, according to the way an individual uses it.  She then went on to list the main arguments for both sides of the social media argument; good versus bad.  One of the good things about social media that she decided to list was that it connects everyone.  This is such an important thing to many of us in these days where we can travel to new places, make friends and continue to stay in touch with them through the use of social media.  Social media makes long distances very short and can maintain relationships that otherwise wouldn't exist if social media didn't exist either.  Not only that, social media has increased the right to freedom of speech, giving everyone an equal voice.  Anyone can post about anything and not face consequences by the people who run the social media company.  It gives people the opportunity to voice their opinions and views on important subjects without having to give a public speech or teach a group of people.  In short, it gives everyone an opportunity to have their voice heard.  In addition to the positive side, the writer included the cons to social media.  She points out that social media opens the door for cyber-bullying, something that didn't exist prior to the creation of the first social media company.  Because you no longer have to be face to face with someone to talk to them, there is no more fear of tearing someone down emotionally because you can do it from behind a computer screen that may be hundreds of miles away from the person that you're bullying.  There is no more sense of responsibility for your actions because social media makes it so that you don't have to worry about consequences especially if you do the bullying with a fake profile.  Also, the writer points out that social media can be addictive.  According to the article, studies have shown that people get the same dopamine high when someone likes one of their posts as an addict gets from a hit of cocaine.  This addiction leads people to spend countless hours of their time on social media rather than focus on school, work, or sometimes, even family.  This can be problematic especially when paired with research that shows that social media can cause depression. If someone is addicted to social media, but at the same time becomes depressed because of it, they will continually go on social media, but at the same time increase their level of depression.  On a personal level, I think that social media is good, but only because I use it for reasons that I deem worthy of my time.  Like the writer, when it comes to a general statement for the entire population, I also believe that depending on the way an individual uses it, social media can be good or bad.