Dark Sides of Social Media

It is widely believed that everything has two sides, one for goodness, and the other for badness. Social media, as an industry created by the new century, also behaves that way. Now that we’ve got to know its benefits, in this passage the dark side of it will be discussed.

As an information platform, the basic function of social media is to spread information. People will update their Facebook or Tweeter timely letting others see their life and concerning about what is going on with their friends and relatives. Or even sometime your friends will report something in which you could possibly be involved. Meanwhile, under loose security settings, strangers may easily enter a private Facebook space to visit anything in it. Perhaps the visitor could be carrying every possible purpose, and this will put the space owner into a potentially dangerous situation.

When surfing the internet, going through a forum, or visiting a Facebook page, we receive a great many pieces of information. But have you ever been cheated by some of them? It seldom happened to us that when we read something online we are tracking its source to see whether it is true. As information publishers always want news published timely, they have no time and sometimes no ability in checking what they received. Or there could be some mistakes caused by the carelessness of publishers. So this kind of wrong information could be a potential threaten to us.

Besides the undersigned errors, there could also be some intentional errors in the information we got from social media. This part of problem is actually related to the morality. Certain organizations would do some change according to their own purposes. For example, sellers could naturally create a favorable environment for their products. Politicians could be clearing barriers for the development of their political intentions. Authorities could be harmonizing the cultures which are not fixed with its dominating policies. This kind of movements does no good to the development of the human nature and the innocent public.

Though the internet and social media are too large and broad to be officially supervised globally, every government is still on its actions of keeping the online environment healthy and regulated. As for individuals, we have to be cautious about the social media. And to keep ourselves away from these dark sides of the social media, I suggest that: firstly, visit authorized social media platforms; secondly, compare the same event from different social media platforms; third, take others’ comment into your consideration.

Reference

Marisol Bello, 2012, Hurricane Sandy shows dark side of social media, USA TODAY, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-social-media-errors/1668911/>

Jonathan Ladd, 2012, The Dark Side of Social Media Sites, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.newsoftwares.net/blog/the-dark-side-of-social-media-sites/1330/>

Mitchell Cuevas, 2011, The Dark Side of Social Media-Jealousy, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.saltywaffle.com/the-dark-side-of-social-media-jealousy/>