A popular cultural phenomenon is social media. Social media has taken over and is very popular amongst everyone. Social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are some of the most popular social media sites that are being used all over the world. In this this essay, I will be analyzing how these three sites have different purposes, the demographics, the percentage of people who use these sites, and how it benefits or harm people who use social media.
All social media sites have different purposes for different people. With 1.71 billion active users, Facebook is still number one over all other social media sites. With Facebook, people can use it for personal or business use and includes features such as link sharing, events, groups, live video, multiple ways to engage, and more. Facebook is also great for connecting with out of state relatives, sharing your original content, sharing others’ content, connecting with different demographics, promotion of events and content, and advertising. Instagram is all about capturing moments.
Users interact in different ways than they do on Facebook. Some of Instagram’s features are photos and short videos, original content, a go-to option for teens and millennials, a visually pleasing network that offers engagement opportunities and more. Twitter is more of a real-time social media site that allows active users to use 280 characters to rant about anything that comes to mind. Twitter is great to stay up to date with news and keeping up with what’s going on around the world without having to wait for the news to come on. You can rant about anything that you’re dealing with, look up hashtags that relate to a topic that you’re interested in, and show tweets that a user may have missed while being inactive on the app. People from different age groups and ethnicities engage in social media.
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Social media is used by everyone in the world, from ages 16 and up, and sometimes even younger. According to statista.com, it was found that 34 percent of Instagram users were between 25 and 34 years old. From ages 16 to 24, a total of 37 percent of people use Instagram. People between the ages of 25 to 34, 34 percent actually utilize Instagram and it is also noted that Instagram is more popular for people that are 16 and older. Instagram is the seventh ranked app with over 800 million monthly active users. Facebook surpassed with 1 billion registered accounts and currently sits at 2.2 billion monthly active users.
According to the percentages taken from a study, 25 percent of people use Facebook. From ages 16 to 24 a total of 25 percent uses Facebook. Between the ages 25 to 34, 29 percent use Facebook. A January 2017 survey shows that the biggest Facebook user group were men between the ages of 18 to 24 years old. The second largest group were men between the ages of 25 to 34 years old. It was found that 20.6 percent of Facebook users were aged between 25 to 34 years old. Facebook is more used and popular among people 25 and older while Twitter and Instagram are popular for people that are 16 and older. Twitter has 330 million active users. Between the ages 16 to 24, 30 percent uses Twitter and between the ages 25 to 34, 31 percent uses Twitter also.
Even people in different parts of the world have access to these apps and are active on social media at least once per week. 86 percent of people in Spain are active users, 83 percent of Italians are active as well as Sweden, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. Japan comes in at the lowest of 51 percent of active people on social media. Younger people tend to spend more time on social media rather than older people. Studies show that people ages 16 to 24 spend an average of 2 hours and 59 minutes on social networks everyday while people ages 55 to 64 spend an average of 1 hour and 48 minutes every day on social networks. It goes to show that the younger generation is more involved in social networks rather than the older generation.
Younger people use their social media platforms to post pictures, keep up with the latest news, keep up with friends, and more. Some even use the social media platform to earn money. Companies like Flat Tummy Tea and clothing sites, pay people that have a huge following to try and promote their products to gain more customers. This is called being a Brand Ambassador for a company that you can receive free merchandise from and money. Also, younger people have a bit more down time, so they spend free time browsing different social media sites to engage in. The older generation utilizes the social media platform to keep in touch with family members, share photos of their families, have discussions, and to see what their peers and family members are up to these days. Even though social media can be a useful tool, it can also be harmful mainly toward the younger generation.
This day and age, social media can benefit a person but can also harm one as well. Social media has its positives and negatives. According to Huffingtonpost.com, The positives are that he or she can express themselves by posting nice selfies or show something new. It is a lot harder to feel embarrassment over the internet than in person, so people find it easier to vent their feelings. You can learn someone’s life story just by clicking their page, seeing who they are friends with, what he or she likes and dislikes, and so on, and of course it makes it a lot easier to keep in touch with family and friends and also make new friends.
The negatives of social media are Cyberbullying, people take advantage of the fact that there is nobody that can actually stop the bullying. Seen on Momstream.com, the three worst social media sites for bullying are Facebook, Instagram, and Ask.fm. Ask.fm is a site where you can create a profile, and people can say comments about you and ask you questions anonymously. It has been linked to 9 teen suicides in the past year. Facebooks most common form of bullying is harsh commenting on users’ self-photos. Bullying on Instagram can come from negative comments under a user picture most of the time. Instagram allows you to set your profile to private, so you can avoid unwanted comments from strangers.
On the website Kids.kaspersky.com, types of cyberbullying include Flaming, harassing, outing, exclusion, impersonation, and stalking, and possibly more. You can meet people online that seems cool and normal but ends up being crazy and has dangerous intentions and having little to no privacy on your social site is a big negative also. Some also argue that social media is stressful, it reduces productivity, it costs money, it reduces creativity and it’s no longer real.
Analyzing the texts, the interpretation of it is that social media can either uplift people or tear them down. With bullying and suicide being at an all-time high, social media plays a huge role in that. I agree with the author when he/she stated that “People post photos on Instagram looking for like or positive comments. Not surprisingly, many of the comments are anything but positive”. Going on these social sites, you will see that people can and will be very mean cruel under other people’s photos, most of the time they are people they have never met, people call them Internet trolls. I myself have had my fair share of bullying on social media.
Girls from my school and other school would write mean comments under my photos and talk about me to my friends. I experienced bullying at an all-time high when I started dating a well-known guy and his ex-girlfriends would call me mean names, say that I was ugly, and that the guy was using me for money. It was happening so much that it started to affect me a little. I wouldn’t be on social media that often, wouldn’t share my recent photos or anything. It started to take a toll on me until I realized that I didn’t care what anyone thought about me, they were just jealous.
My mom helped me a lot also. I wish most people thought like that because the suicide rate would go down drastically if people didn’t care what others said or think about them. Even death has taken place on social media. Young people will go on Facebook live and record hanging themselves and shooting themselves. I had a friend that thought about recording killing herself because people on social media was bullying her over a naked photo that a guy leaked of her. I talked her out of harming herself and letting her know that I was here for her and other people’s opinion doesn’t matter.
I also agree with that social media can be as much positive as it is negative. You can use it to share your business and gain more clientele, make extra money from your accounts by promoting a company’s product to bring in more customers, connect with long distant family members that you haven’t seen in months and maybe years, and just share the things you love such as your family, friends, pets, vacation photos, things you’ve accomplished or trying to achieve, and so much more. Some people have even gotten famous from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. From doing 1-minute comedy skits and it goes viral and catching the attention of celebrities, and from people doing funny celebrity impersonations and getting recognized by celebrities also.
Social media has its fair share of benefits and can be harmful for some people and what it does to them. On the positive aspect, social media can help people become famous, promote your business, make extra money, interact with friends, keep up with up to date news, and connect with family members that reside out of state. People from all races and ages utilize social media from ages 16 to 60. On the negative aspect, social media can ruin someone’s reputation, can lower self-esteem, and cause unwanted attention and opinions from others. In all, social media has its positives and negatives but is the most popular cultural and social phenomenon.
