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Is Social Media a Boon or a Bane?

Social Media is a boon:

1. In such a busy life, Social Media helps us to communicate, with our friends or family, economically and efficiently. Social Media is a platform for the people to interact with each other through its free messaging and calling, present their opinions and convey their thoughts via virtual communities. Now the people can find their childhood friends and connect with them.
2. People are finding new areas of employment with Google, Facebook, and Twitter etc. Thereby, it has tremendously increased job opportunities and salaries.
3. It helps us to gain vast and diversified knowledge through different web pages and blogs. It is a stage which empower individuals to share and trade their perspectives, intrigue, data and so on.
4. Social media is quick and economical way to reach selected customers for offline/online businesses. Digital Marketing is a new field which is under huge progression. Optimization of the search engine has begun to extend rather localizing to the area, which has proved to be the best entity for business.
5. Social media was utilized effectively to educate people and disseminate information during the Covid-19 pandemic.
6. Video conferencing and online classes have been possible with the media.
7. Arogya Setu App is reducing chances of infection and is helping the medical community and the Govt. to effectively fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Similar, utilization of social media helps in effective governance. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 30 crore poor received money in their Jan Dhan accounts by linking mobile phone number and Aadhar (Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile) through direct benefit transfer. The Govt was able to utilize media to transfer more than Rs 28000 crore.
8. People can express their views openly and understand views of others. This helps people to join for a particular cause. The best example, Tamil Nadu celebrates a traditional game Jallikkattu. It was banned. Some people started to protest the ban, but soon many more joined the protest with the help of social media, which has pushed the Government to pass an ordinance to lift the ban completely.
9. Social media benefitted us during the crisis like “Super Cyclone Amphan”, which occurred in the Arabian Sea. People of West Bengal & Bangladesh used online platform to inform their family about their safety and shared their details to be rescued.
10. The Govt. authorities are closely monitoring all online sites, which are helpful for them to get to know the mood of the people and make policies for benefit of the local demographics.
11. Social media is also being utilized to inform and advise the farmers by the Govt. agencies like Met deptt. Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube are now being used to share diverse farming-based information across different parts of India. Varied forms of information across different agricultural subsectors (crops, dairy, goat and poultry) and on different aspects of production, preventive management and marketing is being shared.
12. Cybercrime is the latest prevailing concern for which the government has prepared a separate department to closely watch and observe the activities online. This keeps a check on fake news and helps to catch the suspects as well.

Social Media is a Bane:

1. The valuable personal and face to face interaction, i.e. the social life of the people are weakening. Many a time people some people choose to spend time talking to people on Facebook rather than with the family members in their own house. Socialising between friends has also reduced.
2. Social media makes people addicted to it which affects their daily life activities adversely and makes them less productive.
3. Not everyone uses social media responsibly. Some people become careless about the traffic rules i.e. they use phone while driving leading to accidents and endanger life of people.
4. Not everyone is knowledgeable about the security aspects. While using social media, cases of cybercrimes such as stalking, cyber bullying etc. have been increasing.
5. The constant availability of entertainment reduces physical activity of lot of irresponsible individuals leading to unhealthy lifestyle. Prolonged watching, adversely affecting eyes because of the glare from laptop, mobile, tablets etc.
6. Lot of individuals make purchases while watching advt. on Facebook, Instagram etc. It increases the chance of losing personal data (being provided in social networking sites) to hackers which can be further used by them in cyber frauds.
7. Social media is giving rise to friendship online. Companionship with obscure individuals leads to time wastage and in some cases it may lead to sex crimes.
8. Knowledge gained by the criminals on our location and holidays through our Facebook posts etc. allows them to burgle our houses or business premise.
9. Programmers are another risk who can transfer our photographs from social media. Such hackers utilize the pics and data for illegal activities or blackmail.
10. Some of the fake news has created lots of unrest in the society. The Celebrities are the regular victims of such fake news. People settle political scores on social media or worst they circulate fake video which hurt religious sentiments. It gives rise to anger and reduces social harmony.
11. Business has also tasted the side effect of social media. The consumers can post unsubstantiated negative comments which will affect the prospects with the new client. Sometimes, even the competitors can spread false news about the rival company to tarnish the image of the company.