Pros And Cons Of Having A Social Media

In this modern era, online is the way to go. One of the online platforms or sites used commonly nowadays are social media. Social media can be explained as ‘digital platform that eases information sharing, user-created content and collaboration across people’ (McFarland, & Ployhaut, 2015, p. 1654). They are also generally defined by Carr and Hayes (2015, p. 49) as ‘Internet based, disentrained and persistent channels of mass personal communication facilitating perceptions of interactions among users, deriving value primarily from user-generated content’.

There has been an increase of social media users in Malaysia from the year 2017 (18. 62 million users) to 2018 (19. 05 million users). A survey was done by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) in the year 2017, where they show a demographic of user’s age that uses the internet. 52. 2% of the respondents were in the age range 20-34 and this increases to 53. 6% in the year 2016. This shows that year by year, online activities and the Internet users increases. Like many other things, social media comes with its own pros and cons. Mäntymäki and Islam (2016) suggest that the use of social networking site (SNS) has both positive and negative influences. Having a social media can bring a lot of benefits to a person, if it used correctly. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are seen as a space to create and share ideas within a community where it is a public place that is open and accessible to everyone (Jumanto, 2015).

Millennials use social media for a variety of reasons, including communication with friends and family members, information seeking, and social relationship maintenance, among others (Ito et al. , 2008; Ling, 2008; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008). Social media is seen as a necessity to some as it can help to build a person’s image or reputations on the site (Wohn & Spottswood, 2016; Guitton, 2014; Preston, 2011). The reputation built portrays a representation of yourself and this can be used as a tool as a lot of things such as marketing. For an example, social media influencers. A lot of them was able to create and maintain excellent reputation of themselves on the social media, therefore companies hire them to help promote their products. Another pro to having a social media is people can choose whether they want to create, maintain or improve their identity through social media (Edward & Harris, 2016; Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe, 2007).

An individual gets to decide whether they want to be themselves or be a completely different person. Despite that, social media has proved itself that it comes with disadvantages too. While being able to create an identity is a plus, it putting yourself online gives a platform for other users to display or dish out information to the public about you (Oeldorf-Hirsch, Birnholtz & Hancock, 2017). This gives friends, family or even strangers an opportunity to release information that can be potentially harmful or threatening (Oeldorf-Hirsch, Birnholtz & Hancock, 2017). Some information that can be regarded as private are house address or phone numbers. If this information were released, it can cause harm to the social media users. Cyberbullying is also one of the cons of using social media. Cyberbullying is an area of great anxiety related to adolescents’ use of social media (Young, Miles & Alhabsha, 2018). Social media is a popular site for cyberbullying for young adolescents (Young, Miles & Alhabsha, 2018). Social media can be used for many purposes; interacting with friends, marketing or simply making new connections. However, different people have different experiences on social platforms. Although people usually act or behave according to norms, but sometimes an individual’s image or reputation might be provoked (Wohn & Spottswood, 2016). When threatened, an individual will try to save their face by minimizing the consequences (Oeldorf-Hirsch, Birnholtz and Hancock, 2017; Cupach & Metts, 1994) using varieties of strategies (Petronio, 1984).

Therefore, this raises the question how people experience and react under face threatening situation (Wohn & Spottswood, 2016). There are many ways that face threat can happen or violated in the social media, such as ethics, religion or even borders of morality (Jumanto, 2015). This can lead to cyberbullying. While bullying often happens face to face, cyberbullying often involves language that is intended to harm others. Other form of cyberbullying might include pictures or videos (Jumanto, 2015).