Blog

Effects of Social Media on our Everyday Life!

Over the years, social media has become an integral part of our life. In the past, it was only an online socializing medium which has now turned into a powerful marketing platform for businesses all around the globe. We can say this as a fact that social media has changed the way in which we communicate, run our businesses and deal with our everyday issues.It is not just a communication channel but also an integral factor of your life that you can’t ignore even if you want to. There are billions of social media users that are at your disposal at all times. All you need is a piece of content and the right ways to promote it to get the attention of millions of users in just one go. You will be surprised to find out about the impact that social media content can have on the users.

But the thing about social media is that it is quite versatile when it comes to using which makes it both good and bad for the users. It depends entirely on the user, how he or she uses social media sites in their lives. For business owners sites like Facebook and Instagram can be launching pads whereas on the other hand, these sites can also be responsible for the inescapable peer pressure for a teenager.We must agree to the fact that there are pros and cons to everything in life which is why only seeing an object from a single perspective would be like ignoring the truth that is right in front of you. Just like everything else, the pros and cons of social media also depend on the way that you use it.

In this article, we will be discussing the most common social media pros and cons that affect our daily lives. While you are going through these pros and cons make sure to reflect on the ways in which you use social media and how do you think it is affecting you. By the end you will be able to make a decision on whether your favorite social media network is having a positive or a negative impact on you.

The Pros & Cons of Social Media

Social media sites have created hype both in our personal lives and our business lives. So we did some research and pinpointed some of the most important ways in which these social media sites especially Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram benefit and detriment us in our everyday tasks and what are the pros and cons of social media for business. These are just a few highlighted points that will help to make better use of social media sites, both in your personal and business life. Having an overview of things always comes in handy so we are going to paint a picture of the social media sites, both good and bad in front of you so that you can make a rational decision about their use.

Pros:

There are a number of good things about social media that impact our everyday lives and make them easier and less demanding. So let us look at some of the reasons why social media is good for society.

Ability to connect you with the world

The greatest benefit of social media is that it has the ability to connect around 4.3 billion people with one another with just a mere device and an internet connection. It is the perfect platform for people to make new friends and become a part of a community, whereas on the other hand, businesses can reach out to their prospective customers with the help of social media. There are billions of people active on social media and endless benefits for the businesses such as;

  • Reach out to potential customers
  • Interact with suppliers and investors
  • Do thorough research on the people you are dealing with

Apart from these, the ability to connect with the world makes it easier for businesses to expand their horizon and turn their small scale businesses into huge multi-national enterprises.

Easy and instant communication

Social media has turned the world into a global network which is always in communication. You can easily reach out to your friends and family living thousands of kilometers away from you in another continent or the other end of the world.

The easy and instant communication feature of social media also makes it possible for the businesses to reach out to their customers, answer their queries snappishly and market their products and services to thousands of targeted customers in a single go. It is also one of the best benefits of social media for students.

Great opportunities for business owners

Social media is a vast and open platform for businesses as well. At first, businesses only tend to have a physical store on e-commerce sites, but now if you don’t have the budget, then you can easily run a brand online on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram that also offer you the ‘Shop’ feature where you can add your products along with the prices.

Social media has opened up a whole new world for business owners. Social media benefits for businesses are endless. It has provided room for endless opportunities for both small scale and large scale business owners. You just need to be smart and grab them when you get the chance because the one right business strategy can get you the success that you believed that you could achieve.

Cons:

Time-Intensive

One of the greatest social media con is that it is very timely-intensive both for your personal and business life. If you look it from a personal perspective, you might spend hours on social media just to stay updated with the latest trends and news that is going around or to create an appealing profile for yourself.

Whereas at the business end, if you use social media as your effective marketing strategy, then you definitely need to put in all the effort and time in creating an active and interactive social media presence for your business. You will be required to post on a regular basis and interact with your audience, answer their queries and respond to their comments and messages on regular basis.

Direct non-retrievable influence

The thing about social media is that it is quite vast and millions of users use it on a daily basis, so one wrong move from your side can create a negative image for your personal profile and business profile within minutes.

The things you post on social media are non-retrievable especially in the case of businesses. You might end up deleting the post after a few minutes or hours, but you need to remember that once something is up on social media there is no one that you can completely delete it.

As a business, you will be exposed to the public and they will be free to comment anything that they wish on your profiles. The negative responses from the side of the public can dump your reputation down the drain. Same is the case with social media influencers and bloggers, so it is important that you maintain proper management on your public profiles because insensitive comments can have direct non-retrievable influence on your reputation as a person and as a brand.

Privacy Issues

Nothing on social media is hidden even if you have private accounts. There is so much sharing going on that privacy issues on social media are a big concern. Sharing too much on social media can get you in both personal and legal troubles and there are circumstances wherein becomes impossible for you to undo your acts.

Whether you are concerned about your content, your live location or just regular business-related tweets going viral, there is so much that a user doesn’t know about the privacy policies of social media sites. In short, we must end on the note that we believe there is no such thing as privacy on social media.

Online interaction substitution for offline interaction

Over the users, we have taken into consideration the fact that people tend to substitute online interaction for offline face to face interaction with friends, peers, colleagues, relatives and even customers in case of some business.

You might have noticed that brand often lets you report a problem through email instead of a face to face meeting with the customer service agents. We can say that social media is subsisting online interaction for in-person interaction, thus personal and business relationships are losing the natural affectionate touch now.

Changing social media trends

Social media trends keep on changing from time to time and sometimes it just becomes hard for the individual and the brand to maintain their profile according to the updated trends of these social media sites.

For instance, in the past businesses only had to manage regular posts on their Facebook profiles, but with the inclusion of the new ‘Story feature’ businesses have to add a post every day business-related stories on their business profiles as well to maintain an active presence.

All the new and regularly changes and updates to these social media sites can be intimidating for the business as they need to put in much more time and effort to adapt to these changes. The way you revise the ongoing trends on social media says a lot about your business and highly impacts the image of your brand.