How Social Media Changed the World

When Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched facebook.com in February 2004, even he could not have imagined the forces it would unleash. His intent was to connect college students. Facebook, which is what this website rapidly evolved into, ended up connecting the world.

Introduction:

We record our thoughts, emotions, likes and dislikes on facebook; we share our political views, social preferences and plans.
We post intimate photographs of ourselves.

With increased internet penetration in Pakistan, the youth of the country has taken enthusiastically to connecting and socializing via social media networks.
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Blogsphere, and other platforms have provided people with forums to interact, to share their stories, information, personal experiences, etc.
The enormous global outreach potential has made social media hugely important in the contemporary world.


Research has shown that in Pakistan,
39% of teens posted thing(s) which they later regretted,
37% used sites to make fun of others,
29% created a fake profile while
13% posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves or others online.
Over 30% school students have been identified as victims, whereas
15-22% of them confess that they had bullied others.
Due to mobile phones, laptops etc. the opportunities are endless.
In addition, anonymity of fake profiles further aggravates the situation.


Internet has revolutionized the way we interact.

In recent years, the most dominant buzz has been the rise of social networking.

Social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have overwhelmed almost all aspects of modern life.

They have altered altogether the way information is exchanged, relationships are formed and free time is killed.

They have provided untold possibilities for the online world and yet as the internet has aged and its users have begun to adapt, a darker underworld has emerged.

28% of the 20 million Pakistanis online are on LinkedIn, instagram, twitter and other outlets, with Facebook grabbing the major chunk with 8.5 million users as in April 2013.

A recent survey has revealed that the use of social media in Pakistan grew by 60% in 2014.

Presently, 60-70% of youth is active user of the internet.

Out of them, 51% check their updates more than once a day while 22% do so even more than 10 times a day.

In Pakistan, the penetration of social media is constantly on the rise perhaps due to affordable as well as speedy connectivity offered by different service providers.



Positive Impacts Of Social Media

Getting back to the bright side, major changes are happening in fields such as health care because of social media.

Already, by analysing Google searches, researchers can track the spread of disease across the world.

Patients are able to converse with others who have had the same ailment as they now have and learn which remedies or methods worked for others and which did not.
People all over the world are providing each other with advice and moral support.

The marketers are also seeing big opportunities.
Amazon is trying to predict what we will order.

Google is trying to judge our needs and wants based on our social-media profiles; it wants to be our personal assistant.
We need to be aware of the risks and keep working to mitigate the dangers.

This new and greater access, no doubt, led to empowerment of people where everyone had equal access to show his/her sentiments and opinions.

The main intent behind the progression of social media was to provide people with such forums where they could express their ideas and opinions with a relative ease and freedom.

This vibrant new society surprised everyone with the power of community-building by organizing people with different races and communities under one common cause.

Its greatest manifestation was the Arab Spring where dissenting youth used Twitter and Facebook to unite the like-minded people and to quickly disseminate information in order to plan and organize massive countrywide protests.

Even autocratic governments in Gulf had to give in to the pressure of protestors demanding change.

Social media also filled in the vacuum of electronic media where, for vested interests or want of commercial value, the latter ignored just voices of the aggrieved and dejected people.

Shahzeb murder case from Karachi where electronic media didn't highlight this issue until a massive movement started on social media.
It built so much pressure that the apex court had to intervene and suspects were brought to the book.

social media has affected our relationships and how wasting billions of hours purposelessly on social media has made us actually antisocial,

Admittedly, the youth learns fast through social media and is using it mostly for constructive purposes.