Wherever I go, I can see that everyone uses their mobile phones. According to The London School of Economics and Political Science, 3.8 billion people using the internet and active social media users account for 2.89 billion people, which is a penetration of 39%. This a huge number of social media users and the question is, what can we get from using it?
Social media is really helpful for me because I can use it for academics purposes. Most of my teachers use Facebook as a medium for relaying information for our class. Messenger is also used for information dissemination aside from communication, Gmail is used for a more formal means of communicating with our teachers and as well as with my classmates for sharing notes and e-books.
Aside from its academic uses, social media serves as a close friend to me. When I feel lonely, happy, excited and nervous, I vent it on Twitter for example. I am able to tweet what I want even if it seems that I am talking to myself.
In Instagram, I am also able to express and show places, people I am with and experiences through photos. I can also see the latest ‘whereabouts’ and ‘whatabouts’ of my favorite artists.
Some of my Facebook friends are posting, sharing memes for likes and they don’t mind if other people are being bullied as long as they are praised for being funny. Some are trying to copy someone else and they forgot to be who they are beacuse of the trends that they see. As users of social media, we should be mindful of what we are doing online.
When I was in High School, I post on Facebook every week, I tweet almost everything and I post even the most random photo on Instagram but now, I assess if what I will be posting, sharing, or tweeting is worthy. I post something worth sharing like my achievements in school so that my family from far places will be proud of me and I share issues of national concern so that my facebook friends will be aware about these issues and they will share it.
We cannot deny the fact that social media is indeed both useful and harmful. As users, we should be responsible of what we are posting online because there is a tendency that everyone in the world can see it.
Write&Read 