The media plays a very big role in the modern world that we are living in. Everything became so fast since the innovation of the Internet and mobile phones. But what about the effect of the social media and comparing the modern world that everyone is connected to the world and the past when we didn’t have Internet or mobile phones? Would our lives be better or worse if we didn’t have all these kinds of media technology?

Advantages of media

 People became extremely attached to the Internet, especially to the social media. Wherever you go, you find everyone looking at their mobiles or laptops. The social media becomes the basic, important part of individuals’ lives. For instance, I remember how one of my professors once said: “ I barely go out without my laptop “. It felt like his laptop becomes a part of him.

The social media made an enormous impact in everyone’s lives. We spend so much time with the media. Of course, the social media has a lot of advantages that make our lives easier and faster, so it becomes a part of our daily routine. It’s obvious that the social media marketing in business area becomes one of the most important ways of marketing. There are a lot of platforms that help business owners to reach a huge number of customers from all over the world, which helps them to extend their business. Even more so, relationships are taken on a new level! Anyone is able to keep in touch with their families and friends. For example, I am here in Serbia and my son and family are in Egypt, and I can call them every day, I can see my son and talk to him like I am sitting with him at the same place. In addition, anyone can make friends from anywhere around the world, which really helps a lot in intercultural exchange issue.  Learning new things is also something the media made easier than ever before; it enables anyone to study online and get a certificate from a college in a different country. Lastly, accessibility is also one of the biggest media advantages, since anyone can immediately spread any kind of information and get instant responses as well. One of the most important examples of the influence of the social media is the Egyptian revolution from 25th of January 2011. On that day, hundreds of thousands of protesters started gathering in Kairo, protesting against the establishment, which in the following days led to the fall of the president, Hosni Mubarak, after 30 years of power. Egyptian protests inspired further waves of change across the Middle East and North Africa, called the Arab Spring. Typical for Egypt was that the protesters, who did not have access to traditional media and TV, as it was controlled by the establishment, used social media to organized themselves. So, sometimes the whole revolution was called the “Twitter uprising” or “Facebook revolution”. In the words of one protester, Fawaz Rashed: “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”

Also, we cannot deny fun and amusement that media causes in various ways. Especially young people are prone to it,  because it enables them to interact and express themselves, which is something no one in the past could even imagine happening.

Social media disadvantages

Everything has both sides, the good one and the bad one, and media also has a lot of disadvantages that we cannot ignore. One of media disadvantages is the corruption of our real social lives. Before the spread of modern technology, the behavior between people was totally different. The social life was better than nowadays in many ways, for example in special occasions people would go to visit and see each other. People would meet to talk and check on each other. Now, in the era dominated by the social media, you may find some messages on your mobile from friends or relatives in special occasions.

After all, we cannot deny that the social media took our lives to a new level, so with all its disadvantages we cannot live without it in our modern world. However, we should be aware of its dangers and disadvantages and try to deal and find solutions to them.

Sources:

• Citrine, P. (2015) The growing importance of social media in business marketing.
• Reeves, B and Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: how people treat computers, televisions and new media like real people.
• Drahosova, M and Balco. P (2017). The analysis of advantages and disadvantages of use of social media in European Union.
• Shabbily, T / Ali, z / Arif, I / Uddin, S / Abro, M (2021). Autism awareness in parents in the age of digital media ( a critical study).
• Tajudeen, F / Jaafar, N / Suleiman, A (2016). Role of social media on information accessibility.
• Chambers, D (2013). Social media and special relationships: online intmacies  and networked friendship.
• Pinklenton, B / Austin,  E (2002). Exploring relationships among media use frequency,  perceived media importance and media satisfaction in political dissatisfaction and efficacy.
• Buttler, B / Matook, S (2015). Social media and relationships.