Social media has become an essential part of our daily lives, and it all boils down to the fact that we now do more than just having fun online. I remember those times when social media was basically for interacting; we sent and received messages and connected with people across the world easily, but a lot has changed over the years, not just for me but for many people across the world.
Many humans are inseparable from social media today, and it has become a home for them, which is quite understandable because there are a lot of opportunities laying around in that space. Over the years, I have seen how powerful social media is and can say it's one of the greatest human inventions, even though there are bad sides to it. While we make the best out of social media, the abuse of social media and our addictions to it have taken a new height, but who should we blame?
- The invention
- The inventor
- The user
There is always an unintended consequence of every innovation or invention out there, and social media isn't exempted. Today, it breaks my heart to see so many things happening on social media, which is completely the opposite of what social media was created for.
A lot of atrocities are committed on social media daily, and it's really annoying to see people blame the invention. Tell humans that an invention was made just to write Letter A; you will be shocked at how humans will manipulate the invention to write Letter B-Z and still blame the invention for doing so. If we all look deeply, social media isn't the problem because, without us, it's just another useless innovation out there.
If I am being honest, social media has done a lot of great things for me, and it all started with communicating with a family member abroad sometimes in 2010, when I created my first and only Facebook account.
I visited the cyber cafe for research in secondary and decided to register on that platform everyone is talking about. Just from that screen, I was able to connect with people so easily, and a whole thing happened after.
With social media, I was able to advertise my products without paying a dime and gladly got a few customers. It became a space where I can learn, catch up with things happening globally, access valuable information, become part of a community even though it's a virtual thing, express myself, and here we are today earning to make our lives a lot better.
Honestly, monetization isn't one of the things I thought would happen, and somehow it did. Millions of people are enjoying those benefits, and I am not excluded. In the course of making some money, I have been able to express myself through content creation, and having an audience no matter how small it is makes me a lot happy.
Despite the positive impact of social media on me, I still have my challenges with it. A few years ago, I tried logging into my Facebook account and realized that I didn't have control over it anymore.
I became restless because of my information and lots of data saved for only me; they aren't bad, but these are things I didn't want to share with some of my Facebook friends. I swung into action trying to take back my account, and it took me over a year to accomplish that.
I reported the account and started interacting with Facebook for a solution because I needed the account back at all costs. I eventually got it after a year, and it sparked my concern for cyber security.
Over the years, I have seen numerous hack stories, and it makes me worry about the worst that could happen to me through social media. It would really hurt, and humans are still to blame because the hacker behind the screen somewhere is a human.
As someone who depends on information online, I have been misled by so much false information online, and even though I have developed my ways of sourcing information, I still feel like it doesn't make any sense why someone would share false information just to gain attention online.
The way in which false information circulates through social media is alarming, and it doesn't make any sense. It would be silly to blame social media again since the users are the ones spreading wrong information.
Without doubts, you will agree with me that social media was developed for positive reasons, and it's unfortunate that things have become really messy with it. While it has so many pros, its cons are gradually overshadowing every good of it, and I will use this medium to encourage us to get only the positive best out of using social media.
We do not know what the future of social media will be, but one thing I am sure of is that everything we are doing today will determine the future. Let's just do it right. Thanks for reading.
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