The Positive And Negative Influence Of Social Media

According to Pewresearch.org, 62 percent of adults get their daily news from Social Media sources and 48 percent of them get it specifically from facebook. Even though many of the Social Media apps only show headlines, Facebook shows both the topics of the story and a video to go along with it if the user decides their interested. And for kids, they typically prefer Instagram which usually only shows the headlines of important news, but the majority of kids do not have interests in News and all they can handle is a little headline. Kids typically care more about entertainment which Instagram specifically provides them with in other ways. Furthermore, I believe that Social Media gives people(kids and adults) the important news that they need

Yet, many proponents of non-social media say that Social media has too many distractions and therefore you are never able to get the important news that you need to know. However, if that were the case, people would never go on Social Media for news, and instead would use the sources that are implemented already. Instead 62 percent of people and 80 percent of the below 50 aged people believe that they are getting the news that they need. For instance, there are frequently amber alerts that you see on your Social media apps that give the users a chance to find a missing person(s) that were kidnapped by giving information such as the color of the vehicle that the kidnapper was in or in some cases the license plate number. This is information that you could find on Television, but you would have to be watching the News at the exact right time to see the same Amber alert that you could see on your cell phone screen in an instant. CNN found that an average adult spends 40 minutes on Facebook a day which is nearly double the amount an average adult spends watching the news. Therefore, with more time being spent on social media, the Amber alerts are more likely to be reached out to more people, making there a more likely chance that the victim can be found. Not only does Social Media help spread amber alerts, but it can also spread other important information such as terrorists attacks or natural disasters. Social Media is where the

Even though this is the case, apps like Facebook have been striving to eliminate fake news. Mark Zuckerberg noted that Fake news and trawlers have become a serious problem, but the bottom line is that fake news doesn’t make enough of an impact to stop users from continuing to use the Social Media apps. Interesting, more people have been joining apps such as Facebook and Instagram in the recent years, and there is no decline in sight. As a matter of fact, during the recent tragedy of Hurricane Harvey, there was a page on Facebook where users could report their location and if they were safe. This was beneficial because people could check on their friends and family and know if they were okay or needed help. Unfortunately, there was no such feature on the televised news and in many cases there was no way to know where your loved ones were safe or not. To conclude, there may be fake news on social media, and it may be a rising problem, but at the end of the day, these apps end up having all of the necessary important news, and in many cases, they go above and beyond like with the case of Hurricane