THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE SOCIETY

                                     Introduction

Social means  relating to society and to people’s lives in general .media means an institution for publishing and broadcasting information from any source.

By social media or social network we mean those means through which we communicate with people not physically present through wireless communication. These include the telephone, internet, television, radio etc .Social media has become one of the most celebrated achievement of science and technology in the most recent years of 21^st century. Further breakthrough of internet communication technology we have areas such as facebook , twitter,2go,whatsapp, viber, instagram etc has reduced the cost of communication into the lowest common factor. With these tools available in our various android, iphone , ipad , galaxy ,windows ,palm and laptop computers, communication is made easier for people despite the location of the persons involved.

    THE INFLUNCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE SOCIETY TODAY

Society media is one of the most important things in socio-economic and political development of the society. The influence of the social media on the society can better be discussed under the following headings: the good, the bad and the ugly sides of it to the society at large.

THE GOOD SIDE OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE SOCIETY

It has been observed that global communication have being made so easy and affordable through social media communication.

·         It has integrated family members located in different part of the world and they can conveniently hold any kind of meeting online be it company meeting, likewise friends and business associates located in different part of the world.

·         It helps in passing pieces of information: different kind of pieces of information are now being communicated through social media, be it political ,gospel, jokes, comedy, videos, cartoons ,pictures are easily spread through social media be it whatsapp, viber pages, instagram etc

·         Active political participation: in different countries of the world today like united state of America political participation of the citizen is being achieved through using social network by the fact that people are using the social media network, they share their views and opinions over the political issues that are o going at the moment.

·         Election campaigns are also championed in most cases through social media in other to reach out to more people in different location. The election campaigns using social media take places not only in the international level of politics but also in the national level including student union politics in the various tertiary institutions. Most a times civil and peaceful protests by the civilians are normally engineered using the social network or media without fear of any kind of intimidations.

·         Criticism: in every political setting criticism by the people and journalist helps in accessing the performance of the government in power. Any government that does not allow reasonable criticism can hardly perform well. People in a political certain channel their view about the government  mostly through social media.

·              Academic importance:  people write article everyday and it is being posted on the internet; these articles are very important to students in preparing for examinations and in various research works. Students in various higher institutions now have class whatsapp group for sharing academic ideas and other pieces of information.

THE BAD SIDE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Not mind the fact that people are brought together at a close range by the means of social network communication, it is also observed that we meet strangers and get unnecessarily close to them through charting which has both good and bad side of it. The good side of course is making new friend and getting famous but one  the bad side is that  exposure to strangers has resulted in leaking of our personal secret information with a damaging effect without any assurance of protection of the information given to stranger. Some other bad side of social media communications are:

a.       Secrecy and privacy are common characteristics of social media especially phones. It is that much private that parents hardly keep guard over what kind of information being consumed by their children, hence high increase in pornography, illicit music and videos show which are the most damaging effect of social media on children.

b.      Exposure to fraud: most persons are victims of fraud today due to their exposure in social media. This is caused by mostly exposure of the person’s personal information to the general public where anybody has access to it due lack of data protection by some social media.

THE UGLY SIDE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Considering the  fact that people’s  attachment to social media communication is high and it is also helpful, it is observed that young people spend most of their time on social media mostly charting and watching movies. This has reduced the academic performance of most students and resulting to high rate of examination malpractice.

  It is worrisome that today examination malpractice is celebrated starting from the child, colleagues, parents and even some teachers. This really calls for a second thought on the usage of social network by the present generation.

CONCLUSION

 

It is true that social network has helped in the area of communication in so many ways, thereby making information available both on business and education easier and faster. However it is a fact too that social media has caused a lot of havoc particularly on the youth in the present generation due to it usage by the youth .