What Is Social Media?

Social Media refers to the means of interactions that take place among people from all across the world. Through Social Media, people create and share their ideas and information virtually.

Some of the Social Media platforms are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, We chat, Snapchat, etc.

In today's modern world, we all use social media a lot.

It would be right to say, "We start our day from Social Media and we end our day by doing the same!"

let's justify this:

When we wake up in the morning, we check our phones first, To see if there's any new e-mail, any message on Instagram or WhatsApp, or Snaps from our friends.

It's very common nowadays!

Similarly, we end our day after we finish scrolling over reels on Instagram or shorts on YouTube or chatting with our friends or someone else.

However, we use social media all day. Whether it's for work or personal use, Social Media has become an important part of our lives.

From being a virtual assistant to being a source of entertainment, From being a partner at work to being an escape mechanism, it has become a necessity now.

But Is it our friend or a Foe in disguise?

Ask yourself this question,

I'm sure you’ll get the mixed feeling, you can't tell if it's a boon or a curse.

Therefore, let's consider some strong points to come to any conclusion, but before that let's look into the Scope Of Social Media.

Scope Of Social Media:

As per the latest Report, There are 4.9 billion Users of Social Media, But the figure won't stop here as it is forecasted that the number of users will increase to 5.85 billion worldwide by the year 2027.

So, it's clear that more than 50% of the total population uses Social Media which is more likely to increase.

Now, let's dig into the main question by first considering the advantages Of Using Social Media.

MERITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Social Media: A digital Market.

Nowadays, Social Media is being widely used by people to create and manage their small businesses on social media platforms.

By serving as a Market, it provides a massive reach to business Owners, where they can offer their products and services on a wide scale.

However, at the same time, it provides customers with various options to buy and it enables them to explore various types of products available at various prices.

2. A medium for Marketing.

Marketing is the process of promoting and presenting the product impressively so that the purchase of the product can be done.

For A Good Marketing process, all 4 M's of Marketing must be taken care of. The four M's Of Marketing are:

• Market:
  (Determination of the target audience)
• Message:
  (An attractive message you will tell to your target audience)
• Media:
  (way of conveying your message to your target audience)
• Measurement:
  (Measuring the performance and taking appropriate measures to improve performance)

Hence, Social Media plays a crucial role in providing the smooth flow of these four M's of marketing. It facilitates everything which ensures well being of businesses.

3. Customer Reviews.

58% of Consumers tend to share their brand experience on various Social Media Platforms and 72% of Consumers trust a brand after Reading a positive customer review on Social Media.

4. Helps in creating Engagement/ Lead Generation.

As discussed earlier, Social Media provides helps to business owners reach people on a large scale.  It helps them by:

• Enabling them to post daily.
• Enabling them to mention/tag people.
• Enabling them to post questions.
• Enabling them to run contests.
• Enabling to host weekly chats.

It helps them in many more ways, but in subtle ways to generate leads. (Leads are potential customers who express their interest in the product or services of the brand/company) "Social Media functions as a highly cost-effective channel to generate leads"

5. Measurement of performance.

By choosing the right social media metrics, Success can be measured.

Some Key Performance Indicators are:

• Reach
• Engagement
• Clicks to Content
• Leads Generated
• Sign-ups and Swipe ups.
• Revenue generated
• Customer reviews
• Community growth

6. Brand Promotion via influencers.

Social Media not only provides various promotional tools, but also there are a large number of influencers on social media platforms who promote products using various methods like barter collaboration, paid promotion, affiliate marketing, and other partner programs.

[All such advantages are clearly from a business point of view. Now let's throw some light on the other merits of social media too.]

7. Social Networking.

Social Media serves as a means to build social relationships among people and provide people with a facility to share their thoughts, ideas, and knowledge worldwide freely.

Through Social Media, people interact not only within their nation but also with people living in different countries. It supports International brotherhood.

8. Enable to post various types of content.

Different Social Media platforms provide the facility to post different kinds of content, such as:

• Facebook enables posting videos and curated content.
• Instagram enables to post of high-resolution photos, quotes, and stories.
• Twitter enables us to post News, blog posts, live posts from events, and GIFs.
• YouTube enables the posting of informative, entertaining, and educational videos.
• LinkedIn enables you to post jobs, company news, and professional posts.
• Pinterest enables posting Infographics and step-by-step processes and many more.

Similarly, various other platforms provide different content posting.

9. Social Media: A Stage.

People are not only allowed to interact freely, but they can showcase their talent on social media platforms.

Whether it is dance, art, poetry, story, calligraphy, painting, singing, stand-up comedy, cooking, or anything, Social Media has room for all!

10. News/Updates.

Through social media, people have access to know what's going on in the world, whether it's an earthquake or any other disaster, whether it is some event or show, or even break up of Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid, everything is available on social media.

"To spread awareness is also an essence of Social media"

So, we have these ten points where social media is emerging as our friend, 

Let's consider its demerits now.

DEMERITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Spread Hate:

As discussed earlier, social media is used to share any kind of content which sometimes triggered people in a bad way and this results in hate speeches and disparities.

Such Content is used to be mainly on religious and political matters.

It's very heartbreaking to say that some people especially use social media to spread hate among people, to hurt their sentiments.

2. Time Wasting:

People spend most of their time on social media, for both work and personal purposes.

But they get addicted to it and like to spend more time scrolling over Instagram reels, YouTube, etc.

They waste their precious time doing all such things and get distracted from doing something useful. It also results in a reduction in closeness with families.

3. Cyberbullying.

Social Media is widely used for cyberbullying.

People create fake accounts just to bully or tease certain someone and which in turn disturbs one's mental peace and creates stress which sometimes takes a very horrible face.

There are many more advantages and disadvantages, but the ones mentioned above are strong points.

As it's clear that the advantages of Social media are more than the disadvantages, So considering this, Social Media is concluded as our friend.

However, if we talk about the disadvantages, Something as Great as Social Media has to deal with some negativity too and we are responsible for it!

So we should not ignore this and work towards overcoming such negative points. We may not overcome it completely, but our little step toward it would be just fine.

"Let's use social media fairly and grow with the help of it,

Let's take the first step to overcome the demerit it has, a little bit.

Let's encourage others and make "#usesocialmediafairly" a trend,

Let's prove together that it is not a foe but social media is our friend!"

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