Difference between Social media & Social networks:

Many students are confusing Social media with Social networks because these terms are used interchangeably. And hence a few students are talking about social networks when the GD topic is about social media. There is a difference between both, though they are not mutually exclusive.

The social network connects people. For example, a trekking group on Facebook brings people of the same interest together. It’ll be a network of people who in turn build mutual connections.

Whereas social media is used to share content. For example, YouTube can be considered as social media, because through YouTube, people share their views, information and ideas. Blogs are also considered as social media because it generates the content and shares it with followers. Social media beats Traditional media (TV, newspapers etc.) in engaging with followers.

Social media and social networks are not mutually exclusive. The social network facilitates the development of social media and vice versa. For example – Facebook, a social network also acts as a social media, because people share content on Facebook with their network. And a blog, which shares content can also able to build a network of people that are interested in their content. For example – A blog for new moms share content and can create a network of new moms as well.

YouTube player

The positive impact of Social media on human behaviour:

  • Social media gave access to varied opinions and thoughts of people of different cultures and different regions. This has the power to make people broad-minded, challenge stereotyped views on particular communities and develop mutual respect among people of different backgrounds.
  • People are expanding knowledge through social media.
  • Most of the social media content creators encourage people to pursue the career they love, to take care of themselves, and learn new skills etc. This creates a positive impact on human behaviour.
Also Read :  Do brands rule our lives?

The positive impact of Social media on society:

  • Traditional media (Print media, Television etc.) was the only medium until recently to reach people. Not everyone could share their views and information with people. Most of the traditional media channels are in the hands of big businesses. Social media enriched democracy and equality by enabling everyone to send out their content to a larger audience.
  • Social media gives voice to minorities and vulnerable sections. For example, more and more women are voicing their opinions through social media, who were otherwise not encouraged to speak up due to cultural norms. Another example is that differently-abled people are sharing content to encourage people who have the same problems, and are voicing their thoughts to government and society.
  • People are collaborating for good. Tweeting by hashtags, they are pushing governments to do their duties. Social media has a stake in improving society. For example, social media played a great role in Arab Spring.

The negative impact of Social media on human behaviour:

  • Many people became celebrities through social media. This is encouraging many others to become celebrities. In the process, some are turning into self-obsessed and narcissistic.
  • Social media is also encouraging violent behaviour for many. Before the internet era, people could not harass others easily. But now, anyone can easily harass and threaten others by hiding their identity. Most of the social media content creators face cyberbullying, threats and trolling. People, who are used to harass others online tend to develop more violent behaviour.
  • Some people, especially teens suffer from anxiety and depression when they face cyber-bullying. Lack of awareness on netiquette is causing some people to cause cyberbullying.
  • Some youngsters are suffering from low self-esteem levels because of watching many people showing off their talents through social media.
  • Social media has the power to instil anger in people in particular people and communities. This anger is carrying forward to real life.
  • There is plenty of content on social media on makeup and beauty products. There are so many makeup channels on YouTube. With high-quality videos and images, people are promoting products to improve their outward appearance. This is causing people, especially girls to give too much importance to beauty.
  • Fake news is causing panic among people. This is in turn leading to hatred and clashes between communities.
Also Read :  Delhi's Odd-Even Rule : a success?

The negative impact of Social media on society:

  • It is also promoting gossiping and causing damage to the reputation of people.
  • Social media is the major reason for making content viral. However, not all viral content is trustworthy. There are many incidents of fake news going viral. Recently a few people are lynched by a mob in separate incidents. This happened because they believed fake news that said child traffickers are roaming in their area. Innocent people were murdered as the villagers thought they came to their area to kidnap children.
  • Powerful people are using social media as a tool to impose their ideologies on people. For example, now political parties are creating lots of content on social media to influence and manipulate the views of people on governments and political parties.
  • Trolling is one of the major negative consequences of social media. This politically motivated tolling is also very common.
  • Militant groups are also using social media to influence and manipulate youngsters to join their groups.
  • Big businesses have the advantage of dominating others in their field. They spend a huge amount to create high-quality content in their favour. They can also drive more engagement through advertisements.
  • Materialism is being encouraged a lot through social media.
  • Social media is being used as a tool for data mining.

Conclusion:

Though there are some negative effects, social media can be considered a boon to society. However serious steps should be taken to mitigate the negative influences of social media like fake news, trolling etc. Cyber protection cells and Artificial intelligence together can solve these problems to a great extent. Along with that, ethical values should be imbibed in schools and colleges. Awareness programs help people to know about the good and bad sides of social media.

Your Turn…

What is your opinion on this topic? What are your thoughts on social media? Join the Group Discussion by adding your views in the comment section below. Subscribe to our blog to read answers to trending GD topics.


Copyright @ Group Discussion Ideas.


Want to listen to this instead?

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. We upload videos on GD topics regularly.

Purpose: , , , ,

30 Comments

  • DEEPAK TRIPATHI, Nov 24, 2021 @ 6:49 am Reply

    According to me, everything has positive and negative impact in our life. Like social media platform is good place to show your talent or influence people but many others are using in a bad way to just earn the views from the people. They even don’t think that what he has made it is good for the society or not. For example when we use alcohol as a medicine we get benefit from the and when we uses for our enjoyment it harm our body it is same like social media also. Thank you

  • Garvit Olaniya, Dec 24, 2020 @ 7:31 pm Reply

    I think everything is good if used in a limit and for important purposes. Social media starts getting bad when it becomes a part of our life and when it changes our most important tasks with those task that are not useful to us upto that extent ( who provide only happiness for a short duration).
    For students social media should only be used for productive purposes and some time can be devoted on social media for entertainment but that should not become a habit, entertainment can be also done using other ways like listening songs, walking , etc

  • Sukla das, Sep 20, 2020 @ 10:09 am Reply

    Mixed gender education enhance their freeness. They can understand about their gender. For freeness in further they’re very parfect they cannot fell any habitation to do any type of works. They can know gender wise behaviour have to do with others .But sometimes we see they does wrong. After getting the opposite sex they utilise of it and be extravagant.so teachers and school or college orthotics should watch for all time about this.

  • Tinku paul, Aug 20, 2020 @ 8:12 am Reply

    According to me everything is good side and bad side but as a human being we have to right one . Social media is very good if we take in positive way. Nowadays social media very strong. Any problem happens within very short time people gets the information and sometimes administration does not action outrage starts. Automatically higher authority comes in pressure and if they don’t want to take action in spite of that they cannot ignore. We everybody aware about the Sushant SIngh death case. But some of the people they get addicted this is not good . They waste their time. Some of the people they use it very bad purpose. As a result impact comes to our society as well as human beings. People engrossed very much in the social media they forget their family even. As a result various incident happens in our society. Sometimes rape , murder, lure, dupe , relationship separation etc people suffers lots of. But if we use it good purpose this is good

  • Koyena Karmakar, Jun 6, 2020 @ 9:25 am Reply

    According to my point of view
    We should first know the correct way of using the Social media .As many have given their opinions above I would also like to say that we should use it in a correct way.GOD provides us everything we need but we shouldn’t misuse them.

  • Rohini Ganorkar, Nov 30, 2019 @ 7:17 pm Reply

    According to my opinion social media is good and bad also. because we know that
    The information all over world through social media and many people can show their talent through social media. like some intelligent student upload the video lecture which is useful for students who did’t understand the school and college lectures. also we can upload our singing and dancing video on instagram .so, many people can see our inner talent.
    we can learn online through you tube videos .we can chat with our friend and also share images and make video call to them.

    some bad effect of social media as follows:

    we use social media to communicate with the people who are far distance away from us. but our contact become loose with our near by people. due to mobile phones and social media we can not spent time with our family.due to social media notification ,we cannot concentrate on our study. many people black mail to girls by uploading their images on social media. some people post bad comments on girls picture on social media.

  • Sayyad ismail, Oct 19, 2019 @ 1:24 pm Reply

    in my perspective ….social media is a tool ,we can use this in a proper way or in wrong way..as some one said in above lines ..how a coin have two faces…like social media also can have pros and cons …advantages and dis-advantages are depends upon the way we using..if you use your technology in a right way you can get 92% of advantages and if you use your technology in a wrong way you can can 92% of dis -advantages..

  • Kuldeep kaintura, Oct 11, 2019 @ 2:05 pm Reply

    From my point of view every coin had two face… So as social media also have their pros and corns…

    Social media aware society and an individual to update with day today happenings.
    Social media is a platform for those people who have some talent and skiill and they can spread their talent through social media like ex.. Tik tok start .. Is very popular nowadays from their so many good actors shows their acting and talent.
    It is useful for students those who do not afford coaching classes and expensive tution fees they can easily learn through you tube and other education sites.
    Social media gives chance to everyone raise there voice and fight for there rights like recently Muslim women raised their voice against triple talaq issue and apex court heard there voice and abolished this talaq system.
    Social media empower the nation as well because we know what are the latest technology developed and our project and our upcoming missions and .. Ex like recently we launched chandrayan mission 2 so as far as I concerned everyone in the country known what is this and why we launched this… Or we able to make it or not… So then after we can discuss on it and it’s future impact can be discussed .

    Now if we talk about the pros of social media are

    It manipulate the common public
    It sometimes spread fake news for the shake of little amount of money
    It is very easy to criticize any community though social media
    It divert the mind of youth and encourage them to join Militants group those who are qualified but unemployed.
    It divert the mind of society at the time of election though advertising
    It sometimes gives publicity to undeserving person
    It is harmful for kids because they don’t know the impact of this in long term if they are access wrong thing from social media.
    There should be a age restrictions for using social media.

    Govt. Should take major step in order to protect society and nation from these kind of unrealistic news and manipulation. Government intelligence should show some interest. Through which they can find the major cause of these happenings..

  • rajeev, Sep 23, 2019 @ 10:11 am Reply

    Its important to the world.

  • @YASHASWINI_SHEKAR, Aug 18, 2019 @ 4:41 pm Reply

    YES SOCIAL MEDIA HAS BOTH POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES EVEN SMALL KIDS ARE ALSO USING SOCIAL MEDIA WITHOUT ANY COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA . AGE RESTRICTIONS SHOULD BE PROVIDED TO USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA

  • Himashree Patowary, May 10, 2019 @ 6:42 pm Reply

    Social media are emerging as the effective tools for the enhancement of the society, but from women perspective, i would say, its role is not quite satisfactory.

    • Deepak, Aug 26, 2019 @ 9:00 pm Reply

      Of course social media has a very big role in upliftment of the society…. Women empowerment is the biggest fruit of this tree…. I think social media has given women the platform to shine in the crowdy sky of this earth….. My opinion

  • Archana, Jan 30, 2019 @ 5:36 am Reply

    Social media very helpful to me

  • zARAH, Jan 29, 2019 @ 1:34 pm Reply

    hi im a troller

  • amrat, Nov 23, 2018 @ 3:29 pm Reply

    Social media can be considered as a new religion, society, organisation or what ever. One is free to join , ognore and leave at any time if joined.

    • amratlal, Sep 23, 2019 @ 10:31 pm Reply

      Spelling mistake to correct.it should be iGNORE noi ognore ok,!!.

  • abhishek trivedi, Oct 25, 2018 @ 12:30 pm Reply

    its all about mindset and your self esteem

  • abhishek trivedi, Oct 25, 2018 @ 12:29 pm Reply

    social media if i talk in broader sense , really helpful for all age group but constraint lies in mindset , when the happiness and joy of other matters you no more and there your self esteem comes into picture .
    its all About mindset.

  • sonu ray, Oct 3, 2018 @ 8:50 pm Reply

    As good because we can get many more knowledge by the social media we can read by the social media life YouTube there are many videos for learning

  • Himanshu Rajawat, Sep 18, 2018 @ 11:48 pm Reply

    It impacts in both way good and bad

  • Abhishek, Sep 15, 2018 @ 4:00 am Reply

    Social media is very popular now a days like youtube, blog , twitter etc. According to me it is boon for us. For example you learn everything on youtube also you earn from it so youtube is a best platform for learn and eaen both. If someone have talent to write good content then they start bogging and earn from it and share their knowledege to others.

  • Lakshmi, Aug 19, 2018 @ 10:22 pm Reply

    Thank you for providing answer for this topic

  • Sonali, Aug 12, 2018 @ 5:48 pm Reply

    I think it have both positive and negetive impact like by seeing others peoples pictures they share we got to know that wats going in their life and the same time ae used to think that our life is very boring and others who are posting pictures have a interesting life. One more disadvantage of social media is that nowdays in an internet age people are not living a real life as they are faking happiness for the sake of posting pictures in social media couples goals friendship goals etc etc in real life there is no such relationship which is been shown in the pictures. People started wasting their time in clicking selfies and pictures rather than enjoying those movements with the loved ones .

    • Naseem, Oct 8, 2018 @ 12:41 pm Reply

      But i think i have some different opinion on this …
      As it completely depends on us tht in what way we are taking the posts of others ..if they are your friends then you will be ecstatic for them as they are enjoying there life ….

    • Amar gupta, Nov 2, 2018 @ 2:13 pm Reply

      Yea this is ri8

  • Abhishek chauhan, Jul 13, 2018 @ 12:41 pm Reply

    Everything has pros and cons. Social media has too.If we use social media in limited way or whenever we need then it is not harmful but you know well guys Excess of anything is bad .There are plenty of students they are being disrtracted from their studies coz of social media . It has well said ,”An empty mind is devils workshop” Whenever they are free they use social media and they get addicted to social media.If social media polish our knowledge ,it decreases too .There are lots of fake news Few months back , when supreme court was changing something about investigation in Sc/St act that time people got confused bcoz they read in social media that Reservation is being finished .

  • amit bhandari, Jul 10, 2018 @ 10:32 am Reply

    social media now is a breach from anyone can penetrate into your personal space , instigate you, allure you, change your view , agree with you and disagree with you .. it can move forward big movement like THE SILENCE BREAKERS, and also rises the evil motives of ISIS, you can question the govt directly and anyone bullies you directly . it has both side which goes parallelly ..

  • P. Kolandasamy, Puducherry, Jul 8, 2018 @ 7:54 am Reply

    Social media and social networks are not mutually exclusive. Social network facilitates the development of social media and vice versa. Need of the hour is to create awareness among youth population on proper and prosperous use of these devices.

  • Akash Thapa, Jul 6, 2018 @ 6:14 pm Reply

    In my opinion social media is good but also has negative impact …Yes ,it’s right that many people trolling other through which people suffer very much …Fake news also create wrong thing in the mind of people….By using social media people try to manipulate others….So govt should censor such kind of video and intervene such kind of negative thing from internet

  • Akash Mahanta, Jul 6, 2018 @ 8:05 am Reply

    There should be a compulsory age restriction for using social network because children are curious through the new content and they don’t have enough knowledge to react. For example “BLUE WHALE” game this was popular because it was a game and children and they don’t know the cons aspects of this game and this leads to many death 90% recorded as school child. However this game was popular through social media.

Leave a Reply to Tinku paul Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *