Writing an essay about social media is tricky, especially since there is a wide range of valuable topics to write on. There is a lot of information concerning social media on the internet. We are in a time when almost everyone on the globe has a social media account. As such, an assignment on social media essay – its uses and benefits has become popular within educational institutions.
Standard Structure for Social Media Opinion Essay
Social media essay, regardless of the topic, has a standard structure it should follow. That includes:
- The introduction of the topic – including the main topic, its relevance, the background of the topic, and the statement of thesis.
- Thesis statement – which should be clear, direct, and arguable.
- Body of the essay – where your arguments are provided. Discuss an argument per paragraph: this helps you develop them clearly and logically.
- Conclusion – which should include a reiteration of your thesis statement in different words. Your conclusion should make correlations between your arguments and thesis statements.
Social Media Essay Examples
Now that you know the structure your social media opinion essay should follow, you can now go ahead and choose a topic. Below are some social media essay examples:
Impact of Social Media Essay
“Several people distance themselves from other news outlets such as radios and opt for social media to get news updates. Social media has up-to-date information on anything and everything happening in the world. It doesn’t matter what part of the world you live in; social media has been made so that you can get information on countries thousands of miles away from you.”
Dangers of Social Media Essay/Disadvantages of Social Media Essay
“Despite its benefits, social media has affected family relationships negatively. Unfortunately, kids are, particularly at the receiving end. Families face challenges, including broken communication, thanks to social media. Being online always while your spouse and kids are around can cause a server breakdown in your family. Thankfully, it is not too late to get off social media and repair the broken ridges social media has caused in your family.”
Some Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Essay
“Social media has pros and cons it offers every user worldwide. Some advantages include making new friends and providing easy ways to communicate with loved ones very far away. Conversely, social media poses problems in relationships when its use is not controlled. For example, you get busy making new ‘virtual’ friends whereas your physical friends and family are neglected.”
Expert Tips for Writing “Benefits of Social Media Essay”
Once you have chosen a topic on social media, you can search the internet for information about the topic. Let’s assume you have chosen the “Benefits of Social Media essay”:
- Research on the topic: To search for information on social media benefits, type keywords into the search box: “Benefits” and “Social Media.” Go through the first few articles on social media benefits that pop up. Review several social media benefits essay; you get a good grasp of how the essay should go. It also gives you an idea of what the tone of the essay should be.
- Jot down salient points: From your research, write down relevant points; you will be building your arguments on these points.
- Create an outline: Create an outline with the points you have jotted down to give you a clearer perspective on what and how to write.
- Start Writing: Concisely expound on the outlines you have created without losing the objectives of the essay. Don’t plagiarize; be sure to use your own words when writing a social media essay – or any other essay for that matter.
- Proofread your essay: Patiently go through what you have written to correct grammatical and spelling errors. Once you have done that, your Benefits of Social Media essay is ready for submission!
For your ruther inspiration, read a good essay sample on the social media topic:
Social Media: Friend or Foe?
Social media sites have become all the rage over the last decade. Early in the 2000s, Mark pioneered this trend, starting his famed site TheFacebook.com, which later morphed into a multi-billion dollar business with the name Facebook. Other sites, like Myspace, Twitter, Pinterest, and others have followed suit, trying to give people a place to essentially live right online. These sites now boast hundreds of millions of users around the world, from young people in high school to elderly grandmothers who want to keep up with the pictures posted by those young people. It is truly an inter-connected world, but some argue that social media sites bring more negative than positive to the table.
They argue this because social media sites, while they do provide some distinct benefits for society, also open the door to a host of different negatives. While social media may take some criticism because of various negative consequences for users, it has many positives, including the ability for people to get dates online, the ability for people to network for employment purposes, and ability of law enforcement to use social media to catch those who have committed crimes.
One of the major positives behind social media is the fact that many users can utilize these sites to find relationships that they might not have otherwise been able to find. In the world today, dating can be a difficult process. People can go out on countless dates before finally finding a person who shares similar interests. Divorce rates in countries like the United States are at right around fifty-percent, and while this cannot be entirely explained by people marrying other people with different interests, it can be partially explained by that alarming trend. Research suggests that when a person is able to date a person who shares similar interests, the resulting relationship will be happier and stand a much better chance of lasting over the long run. Social media sites help to facilitate this by allowing people to quickly divide up into groups based upon their interests (Ozenc & Farnham, 2011). They also allow people to see whether other people like to do similar things. This might include travel, sports, or anything in-between. Rather than simply beating around the bush and choosing a mate based upon a wide range of factors that do not correlate well with longevity, people can find other people who make them happy.
Likewise, social media sites are a major time-saver when it comes to dating. Dating can be a very time-consuming process, and this becomes difficult for people who have busy careers to contend with. Young professionals today are asked to do much more in their careers, and they can often find it difficult to be in the places where they might meet other people. Sites like Facebook, in addition to the myriad online dating sites that are out there today, end up providing these time-strapped people with a means of meeting people when they might have otherwise been lonely.
Not all is possible with online dating through social media, however. Many argue that it can actually be more difficult for people to find a person with similar interests through a dating site. This is because it is quite easy for a person to craft a fake – or at the very least, an inflated – persona. How does one know that the person on the other end truly likes to travel? These concerns make an already difficult dating situation much more difficult. Likewise, some research suggests that by condensing the timeline in which people meet, those people actually do their future relationship a disservice. Some people craft more meaningful connections by going through the process in a more organic way. These represent some of the real limitations of online dating, even in the context of what these sites can provide.
One of social media’s biggest benefits is that it allows individuals to make meaningful connections in the business realm. More and more, the business world is being driven by relationships, and those relationships do not just spring up. People have to work toward them, building professional kinship along the way. One of the major advantages of these sites is that they allow people to stay in contact with fellow colleagues when they leave a job. Take Linkedin, for instance, which provides a social media platform where people can receive recommendations from their colleagues. On sites like this, people can know that when they leave a job, they are not going to be leaving behind all of the connections that they made at that job (Hanna et al, 2011). Rather, they will know that they can simply link up with the person online, and if they need anything from that person, the information is only a click away. This has helped to enhance freedom of movement in the employment world, encouraging people to test their wings in new positions without the fear that all of their hard work in networking will be undermined. Likewise, social media sites can help individuals cast a wide net when it comes to networking. Today, all kinds of people are online, and it is easier than some may think to make connections with those people. Take, for instance, the young man who wants to get involved in the world of professional baseball. He would have a tremendous amount of difficulty linking up with a general manager or other front office member if not for social media. He might try to send an old-fashioned letter or make a phone call, but these are difficult ways to build any meaningful contact. On social media sites, however, that young, ambitious person has direct access to people in his field who have the knowledge to help guide him through the early part of his career. This has made social networking one of the most powerful tools in the employment world.
Some argue, however, that social media has actually produced a negative effect in this regard. They argue that, for one, meaningful in-person contact is eroded when people rely too much on social media. In the past, people have linked up for coffee or they have taken in a lunch with a former colleague. This helped to build legitimate bonds that have lasted. Now, with social media, people are no longer forced to engage in this kind of networking. While it certainly has its benefits, with convenience being among the most important of those benefits, it also has its negatives. Likewise, perhaps the biggest complaint from some in this regard is that social media undermines privacy. What do we make of the baseball general manager who does not want to deal with a dozen requests for information each day? That person has little ability to insulate himself from such requests when he signs up for a social media site. While it is true that sites like Facebook and Linkedin require people to give approval in order to have a real connection with another of the site’s users, it is customary for some people to accept random friend or connection requests. Executives are then forced to walk a narrow plank where they cannot be rude to would-be job seekers, but they cannot truly enjoy the benefit of their privacy, either. They are no longer out of reach, which is both good and bad.
Young professionals and would-be daters have not been the only people who have found social media useful over the years. In addition, many within the world of law enforcement have noted just how easy it is to use these sites in their work. Law enforcement professionals are often able to use social media sites to collect information about a crime (Walker, 2011). There are two different ways that law enforcement professionals make this happen. On one hand, they can directly mine information from social media pages to help in their investigation of a crime. Many of today’s assailants post on their social media pages to brag about their exploits. In some cases, they even post videos and pictures of the incident. When police are looking for leads, it can be quite easy to just look online in order to pull this kind of information (Crump, 2011). The real upside to this is that such information can later be used by the state in a criminal trial. In some cases, things pulled off of a defendant’s Facebook wall can make for good fodder for the jury.
On top of that, there is another positive that has been consistently noted by police in their efforts to combat crime. That trend is crowdsourcing. Today, they can use social media sites to quickly disseminate information about a person who has committed a crime. What if a 38-year old man with blonde hair, standing six-feet and weighing two-hundred pounds, commits an armed robbery in a small neighborhood in Nevada? Police can post this information online, serving two purposes. On one hand, it allows them to warn the local citizens about the potential for danger, giving those people an opportunity to take precautions. On the other hand, it can help citizens be on the lookout for a suspect or other suspicious behavior, potentially giving the police more leads when looking for a suspect. This is quite easy through a range of different social media sites, and even law enforcement officials in small towns are getting into the act.
There are some negatives to police use of social media, but they do not overwhelm the positives. In some examples, police have used social media to talk too much. They have been very aggressive toward concerned citizens, and in those cases, it has brought tremendous embarrassment to the police force. Likewise, information posted online is not always reliable. Who is to say that a person bragging about committing a crime is not just trying to show off for his friends? This is an especially relevant question among young people, who will often post things just for kicks, or even worse, will post song lyrics on their sites that appear to implicate them in some crime. In addition, there can be some evidentiary issues when it comes to using social media sites in a trial setting. In some states, it is difficult to get this evidence admitted because of the court’s reliability concerns.
Perhaps the most attention recently has been heaped onto the psychological research surrounding social media. An overuse of social media has been shown to produce a number of different negatives. Some people show anti-social behavioral trends when they are too into social media. Rather than having real friends offline, they become immersed in the online world. Likewise, social media can, at times, produce or enhance depression among its users (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). There are a number of reasons why this is true. This is because social media sites allow people to engage in what many call “image crafting.” Image crafting behavior occurs when a person takes careful steps to ensure that his online persona is presented in a very specific way (Correa et al, 2010). Even for people who do not have bad motives, image crafting can be the reality. Think of a person who only posts information about himself when that information is positive. This is perfectly normal and respectable, as few people want to broadcast their negative reports online. When another person views the second person’s profile, that other person might believe that the second person’s life is all positive (Gosling et al, 2011). Simply put, social media sites can create a sense that things are going well for a person’s friends, and this can be especially disastrous when things are not going well for the person in question.
Likewise, social media sites have been found to lead to feelings of envy and discontentment. A person could be perfectly happy with his or her life, understanding that they have a number of things – a family, a job – that other people might want. When they go onto social media sites, though, they see that their friends are taking trips to far-away places. Their friends are working in jobs that are imminently interesting. All of these things can contribute to feelings of inadequacy, and they can lead to restlessness in some users. It is important to note that these psychological trends do not apply to all users of social media sites. They do apply most often to people who are already vulnerable, and this is one of the major problems with such sites.
While this negative must certainly be taken into account, it is also true that social media sites can be a place of happiness and contentment. In many cases, these sites allow people to build bonds with other people from around the world. They allow individuals an outlet to express themselves through pictures and even through words. Social media has shown the ability to enhance communication between people, and it has provided political platforms for people who would not have otherwise had a voice on an issue (Loader & Mercea, 2011). While the sites can have some psychological negatives, there are tremendous positives that cannot be ignored by any person who is looking to conduct an honest assessment of the value and validity of these sites.
Overall, social media sites are here to stay, and they appear to be much more “friend” than “foe.” People have found amazing ways to use social media sites in order to get the most out of their love lives and get the most out of their jobs, too. Online dating has provided people with a chance to meet other people who share their interests, and it has allowed those daters to do so without compromising their busy schedules. Networking has become much easier online, with people now able to link up with old colleagues and develop relationships with new partners, as well. From a police perspective, social media is a very good tool, allowing them to utilize the strength of the local community while also giving would-be criminals the chance to implicate themselves right on their own pages. While the psychology on the matter suggests that social media sites may not be all rosy and that some people can suffer because of their use of sites like Facebook, the sites have enough positives to counter these negatives. Social media has revolutionized the world, and it has changed the way that people interact with one another within that world. For this, these sites deserve tremendous credit.
References
Correa, T., Hinsley, A. W., & De Zuniga, H. G. (2010). Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 247-253.
Crump, J. (2011). What are the police doing on Twitter? Social media, the police and the public. Policy & Internet, 3(4), 1-27.
Gosling, S. D., Augustine, A. A., Vazire, S., Holtzman, N., & Gaddis, S. (2011). Manifestations of personality in online social networks: Self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(9), 483-488.
Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business Horizons, 54(3), 265-273.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), 59-68.
Loader, B. D., & Mercea, D. (2011). Networking democracy? Social media innovations and participatory politics. Information, Communication & Society, 14(6), 757-769.
Ozenc, F. K., & Farnham, S. D. (2011, May). Life modes in social media. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 561-570). ACM.
Walker, A. J. (2013). A study of the police use of social media and its effectiveness in helping to keep the peace and maintain public confidence during major events and public disorder.
Conclusion
Social media has become a useful and popular tool in the modern world. As such, students get assignments on several topics related to social media. The only difficult aspect of writing an essay on social media is selecting a topic to write on. Once that hurdle is crossed, several information outlets are available for you from where you can carve out points.