Is social media a good thing?

The popularity of social media is fact. Some of us cannot imagine our lives without our computers, phones and especially our favourite social networks. Some people enter their profiles first thing in the morning and spent hours browsing through them. We have got so accustomed to this kind of communication that some of us may even think they won't survive even a day without it.

Could it be the fact that it may be bringing us a
sense of control? Or the feeling that we are part of a community? Unfortunately, we get addicted to it over time and cannot stop ourselves. Is it true that social media is bad for us and can influence our lives in a negative way.

The topic about social media always brings some serious issues for discussion. Before deciding whether it's worthy to have a social media account, let's check its good and bad sides. I will list here some advantages and disadvantages of the social network:

Advantages
1. With the help of social media we are connected to everyone and everywhere. For example we are always stay in touch with people living far off, easily connect with our business partners, expand our contacts, popularize our business and reach wider audience. In this way we can very easily learn the ideas and thoughts of other people. Social media enables more open type of communication with many opportunities.

2. One thing is for sure - social media gives us information. Social media really has benefits to education and is helpful especially to teachers and students because they exchange info faster. It depends upon our personal choice about what we are following. We can recieve a great deal of knowledge from the social media if we want to, and the good news are that it's free, you only need Internet.

3. We can get help from the social media for a variety of issues. As we have many connections, it only takes us to share our question that is bothering us and get the answer we need.

4. Social media is actually helpful to agencies and goverments to more easily spy and catch criminals all over the world. So, its existence is good for our safety.

5. It can improve our lives. That's because as all information spreads really fast, we are able to take a sneak  peak into other's lives and in this way we can learn lots of new innovative ideas and innovations to apply in our lives. Also, it makes us more aware that we are part of a community and can benefit it in one way or another.

Disadvantages
1. The number of personal real-life relations is decreasing. As face-to-face communication is a rare thing, we may feel a sense of loneliness despite the fact that we have thousands of friends.

2. It creates the perfect environment for cyberbullying, hacking, spying and abuse with personal data and other security problems. The moment we enter the social media, our privacy is at risk.You never know when you will become a vicitm and who may be watching your profile right now. Being active in the social media makes us also vulnerable to spam or virus attacks.

3. There is a speculation that social media make us lie more. And  make us more inclined to cheat in our relationships too. That's probably because it gives us the opportunity to communicate with many people and compare them.

4. It's well known that social media can be really distracting and seriously threatens our productivity. The ability to multitask  is great, but if we do it excessively and just mindlessly jump from Facebook to Twitter or Tumblr and scroll down the whole content, this decreases the quality of job performance  and our overall effectiveness.

5. Social media is addicting. When it's not used moderately, it has the ability to cut us off from society. Teenagers are most likely to get addicted to it.

My personal opinion is that only we decide what will be the effect of social network upon us - positive or negative. Depending on who we are and our interests, social media can improve or destroy our lives.

If you have any interesting ideas or opinion about this topic, please share them in the comments.