By: Soo Yeon (Stephanie) Suh

Social media, the forbidden fruit that corrupts people? Social media refers to an open online platform that shares personal thoughts, opinions, experiences, and information allowing people to create and build relationships with others. Social media is deeply involved in modern society. Social media is also profoundly infiltrated within American society: “Seven out of ten Americans use social media to communicate, share information, and find exciting content” (Henderson). Many people raise the value of life through the benefits of social media. Not only individuals but companies and factories also find social media to be advantageous. Social media improves society by enabling interaction, communication, and learning.

Social media improves society because it enables exchanges with a variety of people. The number of people who can interact without using social media is limited. Social media allows people to overcome constraints and communicate freely. Through social media, people get the opportunity to “socially relate with each other in new contexts not limited to school, home, or a fixed time” (Castro 153). People can talk to many people via social media regardless of nationality, race, age, and occupation and easily contact people who are far away. The social media feature of being unconstrained by the streets and borders helps broaden personal relationships. Social media can “rapidly disseminate a message faster and cheaper than through any other medium” (Prier 52). This advantage allows people to interact with a variety of people both personally and professionally, fostering connections. To interact with a variety of people, “3.96 billion people use social media today, which accounts for roughly half (51%) of the global population” (Henderson). This proves that social media is helpful to many people and is comfortable and easy to use. Social media not only allows for interaction but also enables communication to improve society.

Social media improves society by making it possible for people to share their daily lives in various ways. People can share their daily lives in various ways, such as photos, videos, and voice, as well as text messages and phone calls: “They may be used for keeping in touch with family, showing off holiday photographs” (Miller 195). People can share their daily lives more vividly using visual data such as photos and videos. In Instagram, one of the representative SNS, “over 500 million active daily users sharing 250 million stories each day” to share their daily lives (Henderson). In addition, social media plays an especially important role among companies and customers. Social media forms “communities that interactively collaborate” between companies and customers, giving companies “the opportunity to connect with customers” (Tsimonis 328-329). This helps to develop the company by quickly knowing the customer’s evaluation and response to the company. Conversations with customers quickly recognize the company’s problems and allow the company to accommodate customers’ opinions so that the company can maintain customers and attract new customers. Social media improves society by making people teach and learn beyond communication.

Social media improves society because people can learn about a variety of topics through social media. Many people “reported using social media to seek out information” (Whiting 366). People use social media to find information in a variety of situations, from buying trivial products to finding corporate information. Social media not only seeks information, but also “foster[s] communication and collaboration between learners and help[s] create online learning networks” that help students learn and allows students to actively engage (Popescu 61). If students communicate faster and their attitudes change actively, the speed of learning will accelerate and help society. LinkedIn, the most popular social media among experts, has “3 professionals join LinkedIn every second, with 172,800 new users every single day” (Bagadiya). Many students and experts use social media to share ideas and forums. Students who understand and accept new ideas and forums will come up with new ideas and others will learn from them. If this kind of virtuous cycle occurs in society, society will continue to grow.

Social media that enables interaction, communication, and learning improves society. Just as anything has ambivalence, social media will also have its downsides. Social media can expose people to unwanted ignoble content. However, social media allows people to interact with a variety of people regardless of region, time, or age. In addition, this makes it possible to share people’s daily lives in various ways and allows many people to experience their daily lives indirectly. Decisively, through social media, people learn something special that cannot be learned at school or at home. Social media has the ability to equip people with knowledge, but it is up to them to choose what they fill their minds with, just as Jesus gives people the ability to choose to fill their minds with the truth.

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Stephanie is a senior at Crean Lutheran High School. As the leader of her school’s Korean Traditional Dance Club, Stephanie has performed in numerous events and won many awards for her dancing.

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Works Cited

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Castro, Juan Carlos. “Learning and Teaching Art Through Social Media.” Studies in Art Education, vol. 53, no. 2, National Art Education Association, 2012, pp. 152–69, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24467884 Accessed 01 March 2022.

Henderson, Gary. “How Much Time Does the Average Person Spend on Social Media?” Digital Marketing, 24 Aug. 2020, https://www.digitalmarketing.org/blog/how-much-time-does-the-average-person-spend-on-social-media/ Accessed 03 April 2022

Miller, Daniel, et al. “Does Social Media Make People Happier?” How the World Changed Social Media, 1st ed., vol. 1, UCL Press, 2016, pp. 193–204, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1g69z35.20. Accessed 01 March 2022.

Popescu, Elvira, and Gabriel Badea. “Exploring a Community of Inquiry Supported by a Social Media-Based Learning Environment.” Educational Technology & Society, vol. 23, no. 2, International Forum of Educational Technology & Society, 2020, pp. 61–76, www.jstor.org/stable/26921134. Accessed 01 March 2022.

Prier, Jarred. “Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare.” Strategic Studies Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 4, Air University Press, 2017, pp. 50–85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26271634/, Accessed 01 March 2022.

Tsimonis, Georgios, and Sergios Dimitriadis. “Brand strategies in social media.” Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 32 No. 3, 2014, pp. 328-344, doi.org/10.1108/MIP-04-2013-0056. Accessed 15 March 2022.

Whiting, Anita, and David Williams. “Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach.” Qualitative Market Research: an international journal, Vol. 16 No. 4, 2013, pp. 362-369, doi.org/10.1108/QMR-06-2013-0041. Accessed 15 March 2022.