Pros and Cons of Social Media Part 2

What do we really mean when we use the phrase, “social media”?  Of course, we know what “social” means and we know what “media” does. So we can deduce that “social media” is media like books, TV and internet websites that connect people to other people to pass information back and forth without having to be physically present as we do in conversation. After smoke signals,  perhaps the first social medium was realized through the telephone which made it possible to have conversations over long distances instead of face-to-face. A pessimist would conclude that we have accepted physical separation at the price of lost intimacy.

Next, consider the following two quotes:

 “A recent study by the online security firm AVG found that 92 percent of children under                                                                                                                                                                                             2 in the United States have some kind of online presence, whether a tagged photo, sonogram image or Facebook page. Life, it seems, begins not at birth but with online conception. And a child’s name is the link to that permanent record.” --- Allen Salkin, New York Times, Nov 27, 2011

"One particular advantage of social media is that they help a reporter see the intellectual and social network of a source. For example, in Twitter I can see whom you are following and who is following you. I can see what you have re-tweeted and what links you have selected. Therefore, I can understand more fully your social context." -- Jerry Zurek, professor of English and communication department chair at Cabrini College

The first quote appears to be a negative assessment of social media while the second a positive one. However, like many of  life’s problems, the pros and cons can be somewhat ambiguous but here is an example that is clearly positive:

“Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 that the US State Department asked Twitter to delay a scheduled network upgrade that would have taken the website offline at a busy time of day in Iran. Twitter complied and rescheduled the downtime to 1:30 am Tehran time.

Proponents of social networking sites argue that these online communities promote increased communication with friends and family, familiarize people with valuable computer skills, and allow contact with people from around the world.” --- to which I would add the important role that social media played in the 2011 Egyption Revolution.

And here is an assessment that accentuates the negative:
Opponents argue that social networking sites expose children to predators, increase vulnerability to computer viruses, lower worker productivity, and promote narcissism and short attention spans.” (source: http://socialnetworking.procon.org/)

If you were to ask, I would say the strongest and most general arguments pro and con are:

Pro: Social Media contributes to the happiness of both the individual and society.

Con: Social Media contributes to the unhappiness of both the individual and society.

But then  what do we mean by “happiness”. I know that I am happy when I am afforded the pleasure of being able to turn over and get a couple more hours of sleep --- but that’s just me. Someone else may be happy in knocking over little kids blocks or tormenting their cat. And even if we could all agree on a common definition of “happiness” --- how would we go about measuring it? Alas there is no Richter scale for Happiness. Also, the problem might be that there are too many possible ways to measure it.

In either case, the popularity of social websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram continue to grow and appear to be living long and prospering.  And this raises yet another question.

We know that AT&T was broken up by the government into Baby Bells and has never  regained the market share or power it once held. AT&T was a monopoly in telephone production and distribution from its inception in 1882 until 1982. Because, according to Balaji Viswanathan, they grew and grew until they were essentially a monopoly and the government stepped in and shut them down. He goes on to  point out that the larger a company grows the more the government tends to regulate it until the overregulation leads to bankruptcy. He identifies Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft as the social media companies that are most likely to go bankrupt due to increased government regulation. Although I would not categorize Apple, Microsoft and Google as true Social media companies, they all provide a social medium via their email services (iCloud, Outlook and Gmail). He predicts the order from lowest to highest probability of bankruptcy as: Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon. His reasoning can be found at: https://www.quora.com/Which-company-will-fall-first-Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon-or-Microsoft

So, what do you think are the pros and cons of social media?