Social Media is the new sensation that has grabbed the attention of young people all over the world. It teaches them all of the key values that a young person should adhere to, for instance a key example is how it teaches young people to care about their appearance. In fact there is a complex rating system that is used as peer feedback to the picture you posted that come in the form of “likes”. These “likes” can be used as an accurate value for the standard of your appearance.
An other thing social media teaches is the value of true friendship. Once again there is a complex and advance system of measuring the amount of true, deep friendships you have, where you demonstrate that you consider them a friend by “following” them and whether they follow you back or not will show you if they are really a friend you can trust. This system also develops mathematics as young people often like to calculate the ratio of their followers to following.
Social Media also has educational bonuses that can be subconsciously used by young people. In some cases it can teach them about IT and how to use some advance computer software like Photoshop, to enhance their physical appearance beyond natural possibilities.
Another educational benefit of social media is the ability it gives young people to work together and collaborate on homework via one student direct messaging the whole class the answers to the homework.
From its name you can also gather that social media helps young people to become “social” and come out of their shell in public situations. This is because it allows people to communicate without the pressure of face to face confrontation, so that when a real scenario happens they will be experienced in the social mechanics of conversation. From this we can clearly see another way in which social media can enhance your life; the improvements social media can make to your natural confidence and public speaking come in handy during dreaded job interviews. Whilst taking ‘selfies’ it is inevitable that you will begin to understand the secrets of body language, also useful for high pressure public situations like interviews.
One common misconception of social media, is the belief that there is a lack of option. How outrageous! Everyone has their favourite communication platform but there is a vast variety of options if people decide to explore other fields of life. Often one young person may be in possession of multiple social media at once. Not only is there a lot of options to begin with, there are new innovative alternatives being introduced constantly.
One of the key features of social media that really makes it special, is that it installs all of these listed benefits, from such a young age. With all that how can anybody not love it. Social Media, join the trend.
React!