How has social media impacted society?
Hello everyone. This week’s blog is my humble opinion about how social media impacts all of us, both personally and professionally, in positive and negative ways.
According to Mohsin, there are 3.5 billion social media users worldwide (2020). Think about that. That statistic means that almost half of the world’s population uses some form of social media. For this reason, social media has become a very powerful tool for our daily lives when we think of communication, both for personal and for business purposes.
Many of us use social media sources like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even Tumblr to chronical our daily lives, keep up with friends and family, purge our frustrations, and declare our views on a variety of subjects. Social media sites have become our journals, our photo albums, and some of our primary communications sources.
What are the negatives to this form of computer mediated communication? Aside from reduced in-person interactions with our friends and family, social media can present a false sense of community for many, especially frequent social media users. According to Mohsin, the average social media user spends about three hours per day on social media and messaging (2020). That’s an average of 90 hours per week spent basically solitary with computer interactions. Social media sites and businesses who advertise with them are well aware of the potential influence they may have on consumers, and their wallets.
These sites have become rich marketing resources for business marketing purposes to consumers, they have become vital sources for internal and external communications, and they have become a crucial source for up-to-the-minute customer feedback, both positive and negative.
Social media advertising can appeal to a variety of age groups as well. In fact, 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers are active social media users (Mohsin, 2020). Statistics like these are important to know to accurately market to their target age groups. For example, an anti-aging skin care line may not be as interested in targeting Millennial consumers as it might be with Gen x or Baby Boomer consumers. That same marketing strategy could be used for any specific group of consumers that businesses would want to market their products to.
Social media sites use our own searches and words to predict our interests to create potential buying predictions they call algorithm-based marketing. Algorithm-based marketing can bring potential customers direct to small, medium and large businesses, which can be crucial for growth and stabilization of those businesses. “As technology becomes more advanced, algorithm-based feeds will become more intelligent and engagement will be the only metric that matters.” (Agrawal, 2016) This type of predictive advertising could be a benefit to businesses who want to target consumers based on gender, race, economic status, and a variety of other factors, because that targeting is based on that person’s interests and own posts.
As the process of algorithm-based advertising evolves, businesses will need to keep up with changing and sometime fickle consumer tastes. “As technology becomes more advanced, algorithm-based feeds will become more intelligent and engagement will be the only metric that matters” (Agrawal, 2016).
What are the negatives?
For consumers, this evolution will mean more intrusive use of our public and our private information. How much do we want to give up in exchange for social media interaction?
For businesses, anytime an algorithm is used to predict interest, there is room for failure, because the predictive form of advertising only knows what is input into that formula. Those potential misses may mean thousands of dollars in lost revenue to groups who may not be included in that predictive advertising.
What is the solution? While it cannot be denied that personally and professionally, social media influence can’t be underestimated, we must also understand that social media is not the end-all, be-all for us. We cannot forget that face-to-face interactions cannot be substituted, and we cannot forget that algorithm-based advertising on social media is not perfect. What are your thoughts?
Thanks for stopping by.
- Laura
References:
Agrawal, A. (2016). What Do Algorithms Mean For You? Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/04/20/what-do-social-media-algorithms-mean-for-you/#7f0482e4a515
Kwayu, S., Lal, B., & Abubakre, M. (2018). Enhancing Organisational Competitiveness Via Social Media - a Strategy as Practice Perspective. Information Systems Frontiers, 20(3), 439–456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-017-9816-5
Mohsin, M. (2020). 10 Social Media Statistics You Need To Know In 2020 [Infographic]. Oberlo. Retrieved from: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics













