Essay Sample: Social Media vs. The World

62 percent of U.S. adults get news on social media in 2016, while in 2012; only 49 percent reported seeing news on social media(Aniyath 9). That many people with their own thoughts, and ideas. Paired with an easy to use app, that allows misinformation and malicious ideas to spread like wildfire. Means more and more people are exposed to fake news and ideals. Social media is more harmful than helpful for our society.

Despite knowing the effects of misinformation on social media, some people don't seem too concerned about it, even when they are aware of it. When asked the question how often do you see fake facts, four out of five different people with ages varying from 12 to 38 replied with a variation of “Everyday”(Bravo, Action Research). Yet no matter the fact that many people notice the problem, why aren't big social media companies doing anything about it? Probably because they don't want to, or have to. Technically, it isn't their fault that misinformation or harmful ideas are spreading, but it is helping it spread. Yet by letting it spread, they are doing harm to our society.

Fake news can cause serious problems in the real world no matter if it's a joke or not. Some reports show that Russia has created fake accounts and commercial bots to spread false stories (Aniyath 10) proving the dangers social media can bring when used wrongly.  People are vulnerable to persuasive technologies because they don't know what's going on behind the scenes. These technologies, whether they're social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, are designed to convince their users to spend more time on them. “Some fake news was just created to trigger people’s distrust and make them confused; impeding their abilities to differentiate what is true from what is not”(Aniyath pg 10). Social media sites just want to influence how they pay attention, what they pay attention to, and for as long as possible.  This does not even start to account for the massive amount of misinformation and negative ideas people see. The pain and suffering of others is just too much to not do something about. For social media to become better something must be done to prevent fake news and harmful ideals from spreading.

Social media does do good but it definitely does not outweigh the negatives. In fact social media is amazing in some aspects, but the harm has to come to an end or at least be lessened. Social media has to improve and people should demand it to. Social media does more harm than good for our society.