Junior Molly Spencer spends much of her free time at home on her computer, browsing through a number of different social media websites. Photo by: Alicia Sanchez
By Alicia Sanchez
Social media is a collection of multiple websites on the internet that are used to communicate with other people across large distances. Such websites are very popular, especially with young people.
Senior Mariah Tepper considers social media to be “a great way to stay connected with people.” She also mentions that it is a “good way to get caught up with news.” While she focuses on the positive view of things, junior Hayley Brown mentions the negative side of social media. She said, “There are pros and cons to it. And a lot of people actually post stuff that the world doesn’t need to know.” Freshman John Lara took an intermediate stance and said, “Some social media should be mixed into everyday lives but not so much that it becomes a 24/7 thing. Use it for good and not for bad things.”
The students’ differing views on social media are due to their differing experiences with social media. Tepper said, “I’ve definitely made a lot of friends through social media.” Contrasting with her statement, Lara said that he has “gotten new friends but has also gotten new enemies.” Junior Molly Spencer said that social media has helped her “stay in contact with other people,” but she has “gotten lazier” as a result of using social media.
Students can no longer blog, tweet, or post via their school-assigned laptops, but they can access social media websites on their personal laptops at their homes. Photo by: Alicia Sanchez
With the creation of the internet, information has been spread from person to person much more quickly than ever before. Junior Ashley Halsey said, “With social media, a person can ask a question or find something in short amount of time rather [than a long amount of time].” That means that information is more easily accessible. Brown said, “Social media is a very useful tool for spreading information. It’s a lot easier than saying something over and over to the people that need to know.” Lara said, “[Information] gets out to mass groups of people who can share it with more people and it gets out there fast.”
On the internet, there is information, but there can also be misinformation. It can spread just as easily. Tepper said, “It’s so easy to believe things you see online. Just because it looks like a legit news site, doesn’t mean it is.” Halsey claimed that people spread misinformation “to be funny or because they think it’s funny to mess with someone online.” Spencer said, “Some people like to cause trouble for others and others may think its the truth when its a lie.”
Not only can social media help spread information, but it can also help bring change to societal ills and other problems. Tepper said, “The Ferguson incident blew up because of the internet.” National attention was brought to Ferguson, and since then, people have rallied to bring change to how police officers handle suspects. As in the case of Ferguson, the change social media brings can fix big problems, and small ones as well. According to Halsey, the change can be as small as allowing “parents [to] watch what their kids do on the internet” and keep them out of trouble. Negative things can also happen on social media. Spencer said, “People can be inappropriate on social media or be very mean.” Cyberbullying and harassment can be a big problem nowadays, and the trouble increases as the popularity of sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit increases.
How much social media has contributed to society is debatable, but there can be no arguing against the fact that social media is used as a catalyst for change that can be considered both positive and negative. From this, one can conclude that the result of the change all depends upon how the users choose to use social media.