Opinion: Is Social Media Good or Bad?

Social media is this world’s way of communicating, spreading awareness, and also spreading important information about certain topics. This makes social media the go-to place to get anything out to the world. Social media can be positive and negative at times, as everything could be. “Is social media good or bad,” is the question that I asked some students who use it nearly everyday. This question is very broad due to the want of the students’ reason for their opinion to vary.

The first raider that I interviewed felt that social media was positive because of the opportunities that it provides. The more you grow on social media, the more doors open up for you to keep excelling. 

”Social media is good because it opens up many new platforms and opportunities for the people that use it,” said Senior Daijah Watkins. Lots of people who have grown big on social media leading them to more things like being in shows/movies, meeting famous celebrities, and building awareness for theirs or someone else’s brand or business. Social media can also turn into their career as it has for many people already. It requires a bunch of supporters to make a career out of social media; in order to have enough money to support yourself.

Another student that I interviewed felt as if social media had a balance of both good and bad. Many others will also feel that way about social media due to many widespread opinions, but it can be difficult to decide which outweighs the other.

 “Social media when used in the wrong way can be bad,” said Senior Denajah High. Some examples of social media being used in the wrong way can be cyber bullying and spreading false information.  You can’t necessarily use social media in the “wrong way,” but should we say the negative way. 

Cyber-bullying is one of the biggest problems within social media. It is common as people feel as if being behind a screen gives them the power to bully someone. “We found that girls who started using social media at two to three hours a day or more at age 13, and then increased over time, had the highest levels of suicide risk in emerging adulthood,” according to usnews.com. The more time someone spends on social media, the higher chance of them getting cyber bullied which also leads to a higher risk of suicide.

 “But it also has the power to connect people in ways that nothing ever has before,” High added. Social media does give us the opportunity to connect with family and friends from about any distance. That is very powerful and is what social media is really good for as some families lack communication due to not having anything to be able to reach their relatives from a long distance.

The last student that I interviewed also felt that social media was more so in the middle of the two as well. Social media helps people stay in touch, but some people having the option to contact another can cause conflict. 

“Social media is good in the aspect of keeping people connected and updated on each other’s lives,” said Junior Zane Bullock.  This is an important factor as if we did not have social media then more people would be disconnected. It is easy to find people that you know or someone you saw in person on social media as you can simply type their name in and it will most likely pop up. If not, then you will see them somewhere on social media whether your friend knows them or you just seem to scroll across them one day.                                              

“However it can also be deemed as an unnecessary thing when it comes to people having conflict with each other,” Bullock added. This is one of the problems of social media is that there is a lot of drama that goes on. People would see something that someone else shared that they don’t like and create a problem out of it. The drama is usually held on social media as well which draws attention from lots of other people who see the post of comment. When outsiders get involved into drama they want to be entertained so they are going to push for the two or more people in the drama to fight, which is not right.

Social media has it’s many positives as well as negatives. It really is like a day to day basis in deciding whether it is good or bad. One day someone could have shared the most important information in the world on social media and now social media is so great; to another day someone could have shared a very explicit or bad video that people should not have seen and then everyone hates social media. It is like a cycle for people to leave social media then some time later come back to it.