Social Media is a strong platform where people from
all treads of life meet and interact. Each person comes from diverse background
and uses the social media platform for a different reason altogether.
As a result, it is important that we choose the right set of friends online as
it is difficult to screen the people whom we might be interacting with.
But regardless of all its positive contributions the
social media has brought to the Liberian society, it also has a relatively
huge negative effects on Liberians
especially the students, in work places, in our homes, in hospitals, banking
halls and other Liberian service providing places.
Let’s briefly take a look at the definition.
According to the online dictionary, Webopidia, Social media is a term used to
describe a variety of Web-based platforms, applications and technologies
that enable people to socially interact with one another online. Some examples
of social media sites and applications include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace,
blogs (including this one) and other sites that have content based on user
participation and user-generated content (UGC).
After looking at the definition, the next question
you might be thinking on is how it works. Social media like Facebook and MySpace
will present you with a user interface where you can create a personal user
account using login password/emails. After you have been registered, you can go
on to have real time conservations by private chatting, chat rooms, or video
chat and voice chat. You can also exchange files such as videos, images, and
other documents.
The positive Effects
Over
the past years, the various social media sites has gain some increasingly high
attention amongst Liberians, especially the youth, and working class. With the
high pull of attention to it, Liberians have enjoyed some level of positive
effects. We can use social media for business purposes, professional purposes,
for finance and banking purposes, for educational purposes, for research
purposes, and to keep in touch with family and friends worldwide, and for
technological purposes. For example, I see Facebook as a virtual photo album.
Students can learn to work math problems, understand chemistry, and read
history..etc. through various chat rooms, and created groups. Business gets
advertise-mostly free-through these social media, and professional folks used
it as a platform to interact with employees.
The negative
Effects
We
will agree that social media has become one of our most viable communication tools
in our Liberian society, yet it has some negative effects on the educational
system especially the students, in various homes, among families, in medical
institutions, banking halls, governmental institutions, market places, and even
on our personal lives. Our privacy and security is being compromised. In as
much as our various social accounts are restricted, we cannot insure even 90
percent privacy and security. Relationships are being ruined from various posts,
comments, and uploads on social media sites, personal information is also being
leaked, students and teenagers have lost some level of motivation, kids have
been expose to society at a very early age, productivity has decrease from the
length of time spent on social media, real human contacts is reduce, and
interestingly, command
over language usage and creative writing skills has been reduce. People have
now become used to replacing words with letters, and phrases, and sentences
with mere words.
The conclusion
While
we might want to enjoy and make a good use of some of those good features the
social media has to offer, as Liberians, especially parents, there is a need to
keep the children out of reach of those negative effects it has by constantly
alerting their children of those increasingly negative effective
of social media, and by stopping children from using social media sites during
study hours, and monitor the length of time they spend on the internet. Various
employer can also take the necessary steps to block access to some of the
social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, twitter, MySpace..etc. If nothing is
done to address these negative effects of social media, we will one day have
doctors posting, commenting, and uploading photos while performing surgery, as
we already have students posting photos from exam halls while writing exams,
and nurses commenting and posting instant of attending to patients in various
hospital.
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