Social Media, the new sensation that has grabbed the attention of young people all over the world, 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 sophisticated rating system that is used as peer feedback to the picture you posted, coming in the form of “likes”. These “likes” can be used as an accurate value for the standard of your appearance, really boosting your confidence and allowing you to stand out in a crowd.
An other thing social media teaches is the value of true friendship and once again you will find that there is a complex, advanced system of measuring the amount of true, pure friendships you have, where you demonstrate that you consider them a friend by “following” them and whether they follow you back or not will resolve whether they are really a friend you can trust. This system also develops simple mathematics as young people often find themselves calculating the ratio of their followers to following.
Social Media also has educational perks, that can become apparent whilst someone is using social media, for instance in some cases it can teach them about the ever evolving computer technology 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, building teamwork skills and furthering their knowledge in the given subject that the work was originally set in. Even though teaching the young is a huge part of the buzz, the enjoyability of the experience is untarnished, allowing users to have fun whilst subconsciously learning and growing.
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 is put in front of them 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. This is undoubtedly incorrect as you can post your selfies on a variety of applications like facebook, instagram who is owned by facebook and whatsapp, also owned by facebook and those listed above are just a few of the many choices available to the masses. Everybody has their favourite communication platform but there is a vast variety of options if people decide to explore other fields of life and 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, keeping the media experience fresh and satisfying.
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. However don’t be mistaken it is not limited to the young as it is slowly becoming imprinted in the generations and with the knowledgeable present in the youth, more and more elderly people are being introduced to the craze everyday. It gives people the opportunity to be whoever they want, whatever age they want, whatever appearance they want and most importantly whatever personality they want. With all of the extensive positives how could anybody not love it. Social Media, join the trend.
React!