How social media effects us as a society

Melanie Beltran

MCS 244

January 29, 2019

Social media has affected us a society by helping us connect with loved ones and meet new people. At the tips of our fingers and just hold a small device in the palm of our hands, people are able to contact others in the same area or across the world. It seems as though people have grown dependent on their smartphones for the use of social media to connect with others rather than face-to-face interactions. With the use of social media, it has both helped and hindered our society. Controversy arose with a popular social media application called Facebook. In the article, “Who Will Take Responsibility for Facebook?” stated, “…has been all but laid to waste—as it has served as a clearinghouse for propaganda, disinformation, fake news, and fraud accounts. More serious still: Facebook may not just have been vulnerable to information warfare; it may have been complicit.” The uproar that fake news being on Facebook has some sort of impact on the 2016 election seemed outrageous to Zuckerberg. This idea of “fake news” raised eyebrows because it is even harder to identify what news is real or not. Research conducted would have to be thorough enough to be proven true or real. In the article, “Taking the You out of Youtube,” presented the idea of Google hypothetically taking over Youtube and the effects it would possibly have. The up sight would be that videos would continue to be posted and viewed just like the usual use and platform of YouTube but the companies that have their ads displayed would profit more. In the article, “The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest To Connect The World,” stated that, “Facebook, whether intentionally or not, wasn’t giving a voice to the voiceless but was helping to establish online the same inequalities that exist offline. Being a party to that, he wrote, ‘is more than I’m willing to sacrifice personally.’” Social media is a way or method of connecting with others in order to reach out to people about controversy or other vital issues either in the United States or globally. But if a strong platform like Facebook prevents voices from being heard, it will only hinder their business instead to continue to help it progress. There are always going to be pros and cons to having social media present in our society. How can creators use various social media to help benefit themselves and the users?   

How does social media effect us as a society?

There are many ways in which social media has affected us as a society. Whether it’s positive or negative. From the articles we read this week, it seems as though we take a look into the negative side of social media. Based on the article “Who will take responsibility for Facebook” it speaks on how social media was used to during the elections to gain votes for the republican party. Facebook was paid by Russia to use ads that’ll favor Trump and give him the benefit of gaining more votes in which we see today, did indeed help him. We tend to underestimate the power of social media up until it is revealed what it can really do in today’s and the effect it can cause. In the article, “The truth about facebook’s fake quest to connect the world” it states how facebook secretly “wasn’t giving a voice to the voiceless but was helping to establish online the same inequalities that exist offline” making it unfair for those who needed to be heard in favor of those who already had all the power. In a continuation of this, In the article, “Taking the you out of Youtube” it states how with companies such as youtube, those who made it popular in the first place tend to be forgotten once it reaches a certain level of success. When Google purchased Youtube back in 2006 many of its content creators asked for some of the money that they believed they deserved for all their work. But instead, youtube was in fact, collected all the benefits that came from ad revenues. Situations like this show how social media has affected and still affects the lives of many of its users. In some cases, it shuts people out and doesn’t give them a chance to speak out.

How Does Social Media Effected Us As A Society? (Revised) – Jaritza Flores-Garcia

Social Media affected us as a society today that humans used it as a tool for checking on themselves during the week and their spare time.

But social media became a factor due to social issues that happened in real life including the election that ended up put Donald Trump in the White House after winning the election for the first time in his career three years ago.

According to the first article entitled Who, Will Take Responsibility For Facebook, Virginia Hefferman stated, “At last, in September, Facebook broke its silence. The company admitted it had received payments for ads by organizations likely operated out of Russia”. This quote is true because Russians did hack into  Facebook to encourage users to vote for Trump during the election in 2016.

While social media became a target for hackers to steal information from users, it also became a topic of mergers in real life. Henry Jenkins made an interesting case about the social media site that are merged in his article, Taking The You Out of YouTube?, that companies like Google and Yahoo purchased social media sites Flickr and YouTube to create more efficiency but they will encounter the consequences after the mergers are completed.

I believe that social media could be a good way to communicate with people but sometimes it could be a bad thing that I found an interesting info about Facebook from Noah Cohen from Wired.com entitled, The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest To Connect The World that it is true that the company was given leaks by hackers to prove their point about the “quest” Facebook promised to people.

In my conclusion, social media has factors that affected humans from using it due to problems companies faced before but in the future they will get through this for the security and safety for users.

Works Cited

Hefferman, Virginia, Who Will Take Responsiblity for Facebook, Wired.com, 2017. https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-who-will-take-responsibility-for-facebook-now/?mbid=nl_100217_daily_fullwidth

Jenkens, Henry, Taking The You Out of YouTube, 2006. http://henryjenkins.org/2006/11/googtube_tv_20_or_bubble_20.html

Cohen, Noah, The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest to Connect the World, Wired.com, 2018.  https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-fake-quest-to-connect-the-world/?CNDID=9219546&CNDID=9219546&bxid=MjM5NjgxOTMxMDI2S0&hasha=9f3abca4ee1d0bd8d22c2bb6df525717&hashb=04be32edc0c92139a3e4bc3c88619f943b7dd6a1&mbid=nl_120418_daily_list3_p1&utm_brand=wired&utm_mailing=WIRED%20NL%20120418%20(1)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl

How has social media effected us as a society? – Karey Benitez

Today social media has taken a toll on our everyday lives such as instead of watching the news on a television screen we have access right through our fingertips, our smartphone.  Social media has made a huge affection in our lives it even had an effect on the 2016 United States election.  There was speculation that facebook had an influence on the election but Mark said it was crazy according to the article, “Who Will Take Responsibility”.  To be later revealed that in the court-case that it was receiving payments from outside Russia to place ads on Facebook. Not only that but another article, “The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest To Connect to the World” was stating that instead of facebook giving voice to the voiceless it is only taking that away.  This is more of a negative way that social media is affecting us as society, one tends to go on platforms such as Facebook to raise awareness only to be shut is not acceptable the same way google is doing with Youtube.  “Taking the You Out of Tube” was going about how if google takes over youtube it will only cause chaos it will not be benefiting one but it will be benefiting companies to spread their ads through out the videos. Social media has its positivity but in situations like those have negative outcomes to society especially with what was going on with the election, it can be spreading hate, discrimination and hopeless. One should be able to have a voice on a social media platform without having to be restricted.

Class Starting Soon!

Hi Everyone!

Looking forward to meeting everyone in class soon! More details on the class here soon…