Positive & Negative Effects of Social Media on Society

Social media is used universally to share content in real-time and also allows users to participate in social networking. These websites and applications notably have improved communication among people due to the ease and efficiency in which people can share content or network.

In my term paper, I want to highlight the benefits social media provides to its users. I also would like to shed a light on the positive effects social media has on businesses. I've interned at multiple companies' Marketing Department and realized they all incorporate social media in at least one aspect of their marketing strategies. Since almost every business utilizes social media to achieve a business goal, I would like to research any data that confirms social media's positive effects on businesses. For instance, I would love to see if there is any correlation between a company's rising profits and increased social media usage/engagement. At the same time, I would love to see how social media can have some negative effects on businesses as well. Not only do I want to focus on the effects of social media from a business perspective, I would also like to see how social media has affected face-to-face communication. Many people used to fear that social media, and technology in general, will lead people to not communicate with each other as often. I have not done research on this topic but would love to see if there have been any studies done that test this. There are numerous other negative aspects of social media such as user privacy and security issues people deal with. I plan to further dive in detail by highlighting many of these effects social media has on society today.