Essay on Social Media – Boon or Bane

Social Media gives us the chance of sharing information and is a way of connectivity. It has not only attracted many of also, became a big source of entertainment. Many people love spending time on social media and many don’t. Some become rags to riches and some face vice versa. This creates two ideologies about social media which say the boon and the bane. Social media can be a good platform for many but, at the same time, it has its own cons too.

Short and Long Essay on Social Media – Boon or Bane in English

Here are variety of essays that mention the pros and cons of social media.

10 Lines Essay on Social Media – Boon or Bane (100 – 120 Words)

1) Social media are tools using which users can share their pictures, views, thoughts, etc.

2) It is a great platform to keep everyone virtually connected.

3) Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc are some social media platforms.

4) In 1997, Six Degrees was launched as the very first social networking site.

5) Social media is good way to keep entertained.

6) It keeps you updated with what’s going in the world.

7) With social media, distance is just a word as we can virtually connect to anyone.

8) Spending much more time on social media is injurious to your health.

9) People can easily be the victim of social frauds and crimes.

10) Social media separates you from reality.

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Short Essay on Social Media – Boon or Bane (200 – 250 Words)

Social media is a name that is everyone aware of. In simple words, we can define social media as a platform that allows users to share photos, videos, texts or communicate through messages or calls. A lot of exciting features are available on social media due to which people especially the young generations are more attracted towards it.

In 1997, the first social media platform by the name Six Degrees was launched; gradually other platforms came into existence. Some famous social media platforms that encounter a large number of users today are Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.

Social media is a great way of entertainment, more than half of its users are here for the same purpose. Others can use it as a source of information. News in social media is spread like fire. Moreover, social media is a boon for business purposes. One can promote its product or service on social media in an effective way. Apart from these, today people from different places can connect with each other. This is possible only because of social media.

But social media is also a great source of spreading fake news. People are now addicted to social media which in turn can affect their health. Cybercrimes, online bullying, security, and privacy issues represent its dark side.

Long Essay on Social Media: Boon or Bane (1500 Words)

Introduction

Social media is a vital part of our lives and it can be understood in such a way that an average person spends around 2 and a half hours on social media per day. Currently, the social media population is around 4 billion who are active. From Facebook to Instagram, social media has its roots.

People get so much indulged in this that they forget many things. However, some people use it in such a way that it can be used to grow businesses and share information. Social Media has also turned out to be one of the platforms that give people the opportunity to grow in a big way. People gain popularity and become influencers. This inspires many people to get popular and promote products. It is indeed requirements in today’s era that how people are utilizing social media.

What is Social Media?

While talking about the definition of social media, we can get many social media definitions and everyone has their own. Social Media is basically a web-based platform that allows people, join, communicate, and share their ideas, thoughts and beliefs. The forms of sharing can include texts, images and videos. People who are on social media are called users. The way of sharing is known as posts.

People from different parts of the world come on social media and connects with each other in order to understand other people’s cultures and ways of living. Users have the access to see what they want to see and raise the issue of whatever happening around the globe. There are considerably many types of social media platforms according to usage. Among all of them, 4 are majorly talked and discussed and they are mentioned below-

1. Social Networking Sites, which allow to post in texts, photos and videos.
2. Image sharing – These sites allow users to share images and sometimes message.
3. Video Sharing – They are meant to upload and post video contents as YouTube does.
4. Blogging – Users post hefty content giving opinions or explaining texts with a touch of graphics.

A Brief History of Social Media

Social Media has now billions of users. But the things were not as we see them today. Social Media however gained popularity in past few years and it has some past. From the beginning, people were unaware of what actually is social media. To make friends and connect people with each other a platform called Six Degrees. It allowed users to create profiles and make friends. It was launched in the year 1997 and shut down in 2001.

Following the footsteps of Six Degrees, Freindster came out in the market in the year 2002. 2002 noticed the launches of LinkedIn and MySpace. The big rise in social media was seen in the year 2008 when Facebook surpassed MySpace as the most viewed site in the world. However, Facebook was initially limited to Harvard Students when launched in 2004. Youtube was launched in 2005, Instagram came in 2010 and Snapchat made existence in the year 2011.

Advantages of Social Media

Social Media platforms can be useful in many ways. They can popularize people within no time. Can help you grow your business. Many people love social media in such a way that it can provide information at the same time it can entertain us. Some of the advantages of social media which are considered a boon are mentioned below.

1. Informative – Social Media has a lot of information and from many sources. It is social media that many people in rural areas are able to have information. The quickness of internet is the reason behind it. On social media, many news organizations and people share news and data which leads to spread of information.
2. Publicity – It is a great publicity tool, in fact best. On Social Media people get fame overnight. It only takes a blink to make anything go viral and create a storm on social media. Apart from big celebrities get fame and good audience for their works. Ranu Mondal used to be a beggar but with her singing qualities got fame she became an overnight star.
3. Business Promotion – Internet has a lot of resources; one of them is social media. Social media is generally recommended by many experts for business promotion. It is fast and easy to use which leads to connect people very quickly to any businesses. Many people don’t go with big advertisement but choose to use social media tools to publicize their business.
4. Entertainment – Who doesn’t use social media for entertainment? Entertainment is one of the main purposes for which social media are considerably used. People across the globe use social media to watch videos and share photos. Instagram has recently added a feature of reels to post short videos which is one of the most loved features.
5. Connectivity – Connectivity is a main factor about social media. If connectivity is not there, then how can we get publicity and grow the business. With the ease to reach any part of the world, users can make friends and connect with each other.

Disadvantages of Social Media

When we talk about social media’s advantages, we must talk about its disadvantages. There are certain pros and cons that social media holds. These cons are somewhere bad and sometimes lead to a disaster resulting in the bane of social media. Some of the notable disadvantages of social media are listed below.

• Fake News – Social Media has a hefty amount of information and sources. The information however, can be useful or can be not. There are cases when social media is used as a weapon to spread fake news and lead to many adverse impacts.
• Cybercrimes – Since internet is big and has a lot of people getting involved in it. It is quite obvious that there can be people who can commit crimes too. Cases of threats, harassing and bullying over social media leads to many cases of cybercrimes on social media.
• Cyber Security – People are found to share their personal information which leads to the damage life, property and data of many people. Cyber Security also deals with penetration of harmful software without the consent of user. One of the recent events is related to Pegasus.
• Health – People who spend their maximum time on social media can have adverse effects on their health. They always sit in front of their devices watching the screen sometimes in dark too. This can result in problems related to eyes and can lead to obesity.
• Peer Pressure – Most of the teenagers see people posting things on social media. It creates a mindset among teenagers to buy those things. This mindset is called peer pressure. This peer pressure can lead to many teenagers commit different types of crimes.

Interesting Facts about Social Media

A lot has been discussed about social media. Some good and some bad. But, we must also focus on some interesting facts and stats on social media which are mentioned below.

1. There are around 4.2 billion social media users in the world.
2. Facebook has approximately 4.5 billion users.
3. About 90 billion dollars were spent on social network advertising in 2019.
4. About 500 hours of content is uploaded on in every second on YouTube.
5. Alone Instagram has the highest number of followers on Instagram with 410 followers.
6. The second most used search engine after Google is Youtube.

Conclusion

Social media is a vital part and we are so much into it. It is a habit of all of us to use social media in our free time. But, we must understand getting totally into it can lead to many problems. It is important to know that whatever is good for us can cause trouble sometimes. Also, whenever we are getting any information on social media then we should verify it first. With this, we can make social media a better place for all of us.

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