Interacting with friends and families is always a concern for people across the long distance. Since communications are the way to strengthen the relationship between people, they started thinking to develop a way to solve this issue. People started to create new solutions where face-to-face communication is not possible. With the advancement of technology in the late 19th century, the first recognizable social media site named Six Degrees was created in 1997. It enables the users to upload their pictures and make friends with other people. After the invention of blogging in 1999, Social media has started reaching popularity. It has become a technological platform through which we can share our ideas, view, news, career opportunities, and information through virtual networks and communities. The arrival of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in the early 20th century made it easier to communicate with many new people. Today, some of the popular social media sites are LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, etc,

Advantages of social media

           Social media has become an integral part of the modern world is the unbreakable truth. Some of the advantages of social media are listed below:

           REACHES LARGE AUDIENCE:   In the 21st century, millions of users use social media. So it is a great opportunity to market your product since it reaches an enormous number of people. Social media has the tremendous advantage of reaching many people, so you can find new leads for your products or services.

       EDUCATION: The benefits produced by social media in education is inevitable. It provides better communication between learners and teachers. Many e-learning apps are created and students can learn anything they want from anywhere in the world. It provides a great opportunity for the students to learn from many experts.

      INFORMATION AND UPDATES: Worldwide news is updated instantly on social media sites which makes people know the current happenings around the world. The information posted on social media websites reaches people faster than the traditional way of spreading the news.

SHOWCASE ONE’S TALENT: The vast usage of social media helps to showcase one’s hidden talents. Through this people can easily post their talented works. When people support them, it creates a self-belief in them to do something that they like.

Disadvantages of social media

            Though social media has advantages, it also negatively affected society. Some of the disadvantages of social media are listed below:

    HACKING: Whether the personal data and privacy of a person are secured or not is a big question in the cyber world. Hackers can easily hack the details of people through the information posted on their pages. Several Twitter and Facebook pages of celebrities and VIPs are hacked by affecting their personal lives. This is the dangerous drawback of social media among the others.

   ADDICTION: Teenagers are the ones who got most affected by social media. Sometimes they got deeply immersed in social media which cuts off them from society. Overuse of social media has caused a lot of health and mental problems.

   REPUTATION: Someone can easily frame the person by posting a false story. This will ruin the reputation of that person that he/she has gained so far. Due to the rumors, businesses can also suffer great losses.

 HEALTH ISSUES: Due to this pandemic, social media has got more users. The over usage of social media could bring many side effects on health. Some of the harmful consequences of excessive usage of social media are stress, anxiety, loss of sleep, eye problems, low self-esteem, etc.

      Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It is all about how we use them. Social media has more advantages compares to drawbacks. It will be more advantageous unless it is used negatively. So it’s in the hands of ours to make it use it effectively.