Sociology 1

LIZHU WANG
Final paper
Social Media
In this digital world, social media has become one of the major tools that people
use to communicate. Social media is the online tool which provides spaces for people to
make friends, share feeling, and discover ideas by posting status, pictures and videos.
With the competitive marketplace, there are various of social media occur in the Internet
from different company, such as facebook, twitter, instagram, Skype, YouTube, and so on.
Through these social media, people receive advantages of better communication and
interaction. However, some people argued that social media have influence students
negatively, such as the problem of privacy and addition.
Social media has a positive effect on people life because it creates the opportunity
for people to stay closer. Everett Rogers who developed the diffusion of innovation
theory claims that the new communication technology has a system fill with types of
interactivity. People are able to have face to face in individual conversations or group
discussions. These new social media provide an occasion for international relationship. In
particular, people have more time and chance to contact people freely and quickly,
although they live across the ocean (4). People need to commune with each other, so
they can enhance their friendship and kinship. For instance, some immigrants move to
other country seeking a better salary, so they have to separate from their children. With
the long time of separation, they miss their family. They want to know how their children
are doing. They are curious about their kids heights, weight, and the change of their

appearances. The social media have the function which people can chat face to face on
the screen, so they can see each other with their conversation. The video chat offers the
easy way to stay connected when people are far apart. It also allows people to
communicate whenever they want. An author who write about technology and personal
experience named seven Johnson claims during last half of century, people were isolated
because television and automobile kept people away from communication and thinking.
Nevertheless, the new communication technologies rapidly opened up new ways to
communicate, such social media. Throughout the net, people will contain the ability to
express their thoughts on their blog people connect by using social networks. Otherwise,
they will watch TV in their living rooms. The long- term trends of social media help
people avoid this kind of isolation (33). It shows that social media has opened up
interaction among people. People will not just stay at home and doing nothing. Instead,
people can entertained by chatting with friends to keep the relationship as well as
exchanging information by update their mood and tell fun jokes. Through the social
media, people are able to chat online face on face, notice friends status, share pictures,
and share ideas in their facebooks wall or other social medias page to keep connected.
Although the social media make our life more efficient and convenience to
exchanging information and keep connected, the lack of awareness of self protection on
privacy can cause big problems. When we first access a social media, we need to provide
information to create account. Some people believe that social media is a safe place
where people are willing to put their birthday, preferences, relationships and other
individuals information online. However, these people do not notice the consequence of
over sharing information online. For example, if some people want to show off their

richness by showing valuable belongs online, trackers will pay attention to you and find a
way to steal your money. When people share their location online, it gives the clue for
tracker to know where you are. In the recent records, the researchers found that 71.5
percent of 1.482 people believe online privacy should regulate and pass more laws to
prevent leakiness of personal information. By showing this data, we know that privacy
still being the part of disadvantage of social media, because some people have problem of
leaking personal information. In fact, social media is dangerous place where trackers steal
peoples information to do illegal actions if people share their information without limit.
The development of social media has lead a negative effect which some people
addict on these social networking, especially teenagers, and adolescents. The CBS News
report that Why did Thibault find Facebook, in particular, so addictive? He writes that
it's because "we are essentially narcissistic and want to be the center of attention.... I want
them to pay attention to me, to 'like' me, that's why." From this quotation, we can
determine that people tend to take pictures and post these pictures with written feelings to
get other peoples attention and response. They addict to these social media not only
because they have the addiction to chat with friends, they also want to catch other
peoples attention by posting things on social networking site. According to the article of
Why use social media, the data show that there is approximately 73 percent of adult are
the member of Facebook and 64 percent of users have the habit of visiting Facebook
every day. The data has showed that check their social media webpage every day has
become most of peoples major habit. When people playing with their cell phone, they
tend to open their social media to view other peoples posts, reply on their posts and click
the bottom of like to other peoples posts. Some people even spend their sleeping time to

chat with people through social media, especially the group of people who fall in love
with someone. The formation of special motion and feeling while they chat attract certain
individuals attract them to keep chatting. Therefore, they start to addict to social media
which make them to forget their responsibilities on education or work.
Compare the negative and positive influence that social media involved, we can
connect this conflict to the conflict theory according to the sociological perspectives.
Conflict theory refers to the inequality that exists in individual or a group of people. For
example, wealth people and poor people always have the gaps which show their
inequality on material, living condition, education condition and so on. For the students
who are poor, they do not have the money to buy computer or smart phone to access
social media. Their living environment is not same as wealthy students. With the limited
environment, the social media will not likely to influence them on both side of its
disadvantages and advantage, because they never had change to become members of one
of the social media.
In conclusion, people can be effect by social media negatively and positively. In
order to avoid the negative impact of social media, people should recognize the pro and
con of social media at first. People also need to use social media in appropriate way to
help them on different aspect of life. On the other hand, people should have the
awareness of self privacy protection and keep away from addiction. Addition to social
media can be very harmful to peoples life if people do not have the awareness of
controlling self. Overall, people should learn how to take advantages of social media and
avoid disadvantage of social media.

Works cited
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Johnson, Steven. The Internet. In the Digital Divide Argument for and Against
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Bauerlein. New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2011. 26-33. Print.
King, David Lee. "Why Use Social Media?." Library Technology Reports 51.1 (2015): 69. Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Mar. 2015.
Rogers, Everett M. The changing Nature of Human Communication. Communication
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