The Impact of Social Media on Society

Over the past decade, we have seen the rapid development of all kinds of technology. Smartphones and other devices are taking over our lives. It was impossible to imagine an alarm clock, calculator, and daily newspapers all in one place, accessible in just a couple of clicks. And of course, nowadays, apart from smartphones and computers, people are widely using social media networks.

Social media essay and research paper topics

Finally, we would like to present some interesting topics for your essay:

Social media argumentative essay ideas:

• Can social media be useful for studying?
• Essay about social media effects
• What is an impact of social media on youth?
• Are social media useful or harmful for corporate culture?
• Impacts of social media essay
• Do social media have a negative impact on our grammar and spelling?
• Positives of social media
• Should parents check their children’s social media profiles?
• Social media addiction essay
• Do social media companies exploit their users?
• Essay about media influence

As you can see there are numerous argumentative essay on social media ideas. You can come up with a unique one based on the proposed options if you would like to get creative.

Social media opinion essay ideas:

• What is the biggest advantage of social media for you?
• How do social media impact your life?
• Is social media a good thing or a bad thing for you?
• Essays on social media addiction and overcoming it
• Can you refuse using social media?
• The adverse impact of social media we should fight agains

Ideas for persuasive essay about social media:

• Great things we owe to social media
• Does social media promote or harm real-life communication? 
• Should people be taught to be cautious about what they post online? 
• Should we stop using social media at all?
• Should children under 13 be allowed to use social media?

Social media addiction research paper ideas:

• The impact of social media addiction on children’s mental state
• Social media addiction and its implications for communication
• Social media and the link to drug addiction
• Online social networking and mental health

Brief history of social media

It’s hard to underestimate how social media affects society. But many of us do not know about its history. Everything has started with messengers where you could text your friends, send some small files, sell and buy something, and even get scammed by somebody. Eventually, such huge networks as Facebook and Instagram came into the picture, becoming an indispensable part of the life of a modern person.

Is social media good or bad for you?

Many argue about the negative effects of social media, but there is no doubt that such an invention has changed our lives forever. So now every phone user has at least one social media app, if not more. Of course, there are many instances of excessive use of social media, but, generally, those are awesome creations that help us in some way. However, certain useful tools may turn into the time killers that make us less sociable. In this case, we can talk about social media negative effects. But to understand this topic, we will have to do a little research to see in general how everything works in general.

What are the networking sites and how do they work?

That’s a good question you’ve probably never thought of. You can find numerous articles on social media, but there is no real need to explain to someone what social media is. We have all seen the interface of such websites as Facebook or Twitter. When you use them, you never think of the effects of social media on communication. All we see is a feed with news, new messages from your friends, new likes, and so on.

So, social networks were created to replace the old-fashioned messengers that we were using in the last decade. They still offer you the ability to communicate with your friends and send various files, and apart from that, you can also find a lot of interesting and funny information and join the groups of interest. Therefore, we cannot deny the positive impact of social media on our lives.

However, there are many things that are just hidden from an average person’s eyes. For example, many prohibited items are sold and bought via these websites. Moreover, many crimes, such as blackmailing, can also occur online via social media. Still, there are more positive effects of social media as they made our lives easier and more interesting. In this article, we are going to provide you with information on how social media affected every sphere of life both in a positive and negative way.

How does social media affect society?

Put aside the annoying news about your friend’s new photo or the marriage of your relative. Those might be the thing your Facebook news mechanism wants you to see, but actually, there are more important problems that social websites are connected with. They have an effect on business, healthcare, and social life of millions of people.

Any social media research paper will tell you that there are two sides of the coin. Still, it is hard to believe in the darker side of social networks. What impacts do social media websites have on our minds and the world in general? What are the effects of social media on college students? Do they influence our productivity and mental state? And finally, how bad the influence of social media on teenagers is?

Impact on Business

You’ve probably noticed that Facebook and Instagram turned into marketing platforms. Currently, social networks are among the best ways of advertising that humanity has ever seen. First of all, it is cheap, so you can easily create as many advertisements as you like. Moreover, spending too much time online, people are actually bringing a lot of profit to the business companies.

Also, it is really easy to find the audience that you need. For example, there is no need for a sports company to advertise their products on the TV, as they know that bodybuilders and footballers will go to the special groups on Facebook and definitely notice the ad. So, it is, for sure, worth the company’s money to advertise the products on the Internet.

Impact on Politics

Have you seen the US Presidential Elections? That was actually a battle between two content managers posting advertisements for each of the candidates. The social media websites can not only drive people to vote for a specific person but also ignite mass protests. People can communicate to meet in real life and organize some kinds of events that might potentially become the start of a war or bring down the dictatorships that have lasted for decades. By the way, you can find many social media scholarly articles and even documentaries about their impact on politics.

 Impact on Privacy

Research about social media shows that in the 21^st century, our privacy is in more danger than it has ever been. There was an interesting situation in 2018 when Mark Zuckerberg was invited to a hearing of the Facebook case in court. Long story short, he had made some clear statements that the social networks have all the personal data of users, which can be accessed by company employees need be.

The privacy problem had appeared not too long ago when some social networks like Twitter and Telegram were blocked in several countries. The official reasons were different; however, the main reason was the inability of the government to control these platforms. Instead, they were trying to explain why social media is bad for society in general and how these exact services are bad for the security of their countries in particular.

Impact on Socialization

Any essay on socialization will be about all the bad sides of the platforms. You will probably read about social media addiction or unrealistic body images created on Instagram. Indeed, this is all true, but many of those texts leave a huge gap talking about how social networking has changed society only in a bad way.

A lot of people have friends and relatives in other countries. But if we were living in the previous century, there would be no chance for us to reconnect except for sending letters. Therefore, we have to realize that the implications of social media are not as vast as the benefits we enjoy when using it.

Nowadays, you can socialize the way you like, find new friends, explore new events, create something, and do many other awesome things using social networks. We can find and share any information we want or even find an online club where people with the same interests as you share their thoughts, news, and other interesting information. So it is impossible to claim that there is only the negative effect of social media on society and individuals.

Impact on New Generations

It is obvious why many scientists are actively discussing the topic of negative impacts of social media as it is hard not to see the difference between the new generation and the older one. Children born in the last decade are communicating less, and it is reflected in the way the youth and kids socialize these days, which is one of the obvious effects of social media on society.

Currently, teens are mostly communicating in groups of interest found on social media. Some authors of social media research papers even claim that people will not be able to co-exist with each other in the near future. Not being used to face-to-face communication can have a tremendous impact on the way teens will communicate at the workplace and overcome day-to-day challenges in general. That is, without any doubt, one of the negative effects of social media on teenagers. Still, if used in the way it has to be, a social network can have many great benefits that our ancestors would only dream about.

Impact on Productivity

It is not a secret that we are spending an enormous amount of time on the Internet. Any paper on social media will tell you that there is almost no way of spending just a couple minutes a day on platforms if you want to actually communicate in the 21^st century. The social network audience includes billions of people, and there is a high chance that almost all your friends, relatives, and colleagues are using some kind of social website. The productivity during the time spend on texting and surfing the Web is equal to zero, and the saddest part about this is that almost nobody can notice this change in themselves.

By the way, did you know that more and more companies are banning social media websites in the office? You will most likely know some people who have a boss who restricts the access to social media platforms. Those bosses are usually disliked by the employees, but still, those managers are the most successful. The reason is simple; when people go online, they find something interesting, and afterward, get lost in the Internet. What was just a reply to a friend becomes an hour-long stare at the new collection of bags or an interesting essay on social media.

So, the ‘bad’ manager wins because he or she makes the employees more productive. There were even some studies conducted on this topic since this is one of the most interesting research topics about social media. And it came as a surprise that companies worldwide lose billions of dollars annually because of the careless employees who are more interested in social media than the actual work.

Impact on History

Generally, we tend to say that we know our history. However, only some of us know where to get the real information on the Web, while some just believe what they see on a random website. That is when the social networks come into the game with many fake facts. Studies on social media have shown that almost 70% of the facts on the Web are not true. It is well-known that events occurring in the world are shown in various different ways by mass media and their users. Therefore, at the end of the day, it is hard to understand which information is factual, what is a lie, and what is simply someone’s opinion, which is why learning a history of something becomes a challenge.

Impact on Personal Life and Relationships

Social media affect personal life one way or another. Let’s imagine a couple using the same platform. Every time one posts a picture of themselves and their loved one, their significant other might have questions or even starts an argument over the fact that one should not have posted this photo online. Also, people who use social media will most likely find out about your new girlfriend or boyfriend with the help of likes and shares. So, remember that everything you do on social media is always public.

How does social media affect students?

The issue of the effects of social media on teens and young people has always been quite topical. You might have heard many opinions, but for your essay, you will have to present both good and bad sides.

This topic is so crucial that it has to be separated from the other themes that include the effects of social media. Teenagers and students in general are the most impactful audience. It was proved that teens in the US spend 9 hours a day on social media. Any essay on social media will tell you that we have to protect these young minds from the things that the Web offers because we do not want them to get hurt by that. However, we cannot just isolate them from the Internet, so the only way to solve this problem is to find out what actually is bad for teens and why social networks are bad for students.

Communication with other students

There is no doubt that communication between students has already become worse than in the past years and that social media is one of the reasons for it. Still, we just cannot forget about the main purpose of such platforms, and that is to share the opinions, give comments on some topics, and just have fun. Social networks are the opportunity for shy people to have enough courage to give their opinions on various topics, and they are not scared of others.

View of yourself and others

With the rise of social media, young people have a chance to make a claim about themselves. You are able to show everyone what you can do. And if somebody in the class sees the charming pictures that you can draw or how well you can sing, they will share this immediately with others. Also, students have a habit of sharing videos of talented students all around the Web, making a shy person’s creation go viral.

Social media research questions

Here some social media research questions ideas for you to consider for your research paper or a persuasive essay on social media:

• Nowadays, a lot of scholarly articles on social media addiction state that the number of students who suffer from social media addiction is increasing from year to year with incredible speed. But what is that addiction, and is it real?
• Social media addiction is a problem in the most developed countries in the world like the USA, England, and Germany, but the issue is so huge that it appears here and there all around the world. So, can social media addiction be treated like drug or alcohol addiction? Very likely – yes. The nature of addiction is psychological, and it affects mental state and relationships.
• How much time do college students spend on social media? Some US researchers in their scholarly articles on social media claim that the students spend on average 2 hours per day on different social media platforms. You may conduct a research using the information from other countries.
• What are the consequences of social media use? This question is so broad that you can refer to any research on this topic or conduct your own study.

How social media affects education?

Negative effects of social media on students’ academic performance has been proven by many professionals. However, can we say that social media is good for us in any way when it comes to studying?

But what about social media and academic performance? How are those two connected? As it was mentioned before, we cannot take too much information at once. By reading news feed or messaging your friend for too long, you will make your memory full of useless and often fake facts. When you sit down to do some work, you will be surprised how tired you are without doing anything. So, when working on one of those impossibly difficult sociological research topics for college students, you have to consider turning off your phone not to get any messages at that time or just tell your friends that you are busy at that moment. Yes, it might be a little rude to some point, but this way, you will be able to restore the needed energy to complete the difficult task. But your effort will definitely pay off almost immediately, and you will be able to finish your projects faster than usual. All you need to do is just to get over that first week of not using social media.

Still, there is another question to think of when researching or writing about social media. Can social media might have positive effects on the students? It probably can. And, surprisingly, the arguments are pretty strong. One research paper on social media revealed that our brains indeed get tired, but they cannot live without new information. That is where social media is coming for help. It has enough abilities to provide our brains with new information. All we need to do is just limit ourselves from anything that can harm ourselves.

The worst of the social media impact

Cyberbullying

You might have heard this word previously. The sad fact is that bullying has risen from teasing that happens in the school bathrooms to a norm in the 21^st century. With the transfer of our communication to social media websites, bullies needed to find a way to keep up with everything and get hold of their victims. The Internet became a perfect place for such people because anybody can be anonymous here. What can you do in order to avoid cyberbullying? First of all, try not to add unknown people to your friend list as they might be somebody who wants to harm you. Also, you should not be scared to tell the police if cyberbullying takes place.

Blackmailing

Sadly enough, it has been a thing long before the computers even appeared. Any stolen secret file or anything private that is not supposed to be shared could easily get in the hands of a criminal.

Just like cyberbullying, blackmailing had to move to the new battlefield due to the death of home phones. But, as soon as the transfer was managed, criminals realized that it was even easier for them to ask for something from their victims on the Internet as being anonymous gave them a chance to not be spotted by the police.

Scamming

Scamming is an old way of getting money that has got to social media a long time ago. Many essays on social media cover this topic as it is crucial for people to know who they are facing and how to protect themselves from such a thing. There are various ways Internet users can be scammed out of their money, and they are getting more clever and elaborate each year.

For example, people of most ages can become victims of online dating scams, where their “dates” will ask for money to buy tickets and fly to the country where the victim they’re scamming lives. Alternatively, they will ask for help to pay for something urgent, such as care for their sick relative. Also, people are often quick to trust the messages sent by their friends, whose accounts were hacked, or by individuals impersonating someone famous. This all leads to loss of money, and, of course, emotional trauma.

The future of social media

Every year more and more people are joining new social networks. At some point, everyone who is connected to the Internet will already be registered in one of the biggest social media networks, and after that moment, nobody knows what will happen. The thing that is coming to the mind is that some new social media platforms will most likely be created. Possibly, it will be slowly bringing the end of normal communication among people. Anyway, the invention of social media networks brings more benefits than harm; all we need to do is to learn to use them wisely.