Surrounded by Nobody, and Why That’s a Good Thing!

We have all heard the stories of people whose lives have been consumed by social media. The friend who eyes are glued to their phone during important events. Or even the social influencers who become stricken with anxiety and depression from obsessing over how little likes their post received. It seems everywhere you go, psychologist, educators, and the general public seem to give social media a bad label, but does it deserve it? Where is the praise for the good that social media has created?

In fact, there is so much good that social media has to offer beyond the humor of memes and funny videos, that this would be quite a lengthy article if I were to list them all! Instead, it’s best to focus on what I believe are the two main benefits that social media has created – one as a benefit to society as a whole and the other being a more personal benefit.

For society, social media has created a platform of social outreach, crowdfunding, and has allowed people to work together in ways previously unheard of. By use of websites such as Patreon, people can now engage and support one another at the click of a button, compounded even further when they share a post and spread the message to their friends. Projects and charities that once needed to invest in advertising can now make hundreds of thousands within a day

The concept of working together even expands into the field of criminology. Facebook groups and threads on Reddit have led to missing people being found, frauds being exposed, and criminals being prosecuted – all from the combined effort and information sharing from people who sit in the comfort of their own home.

The second, more personal and perhaps most important benefit is that it gives people who are otherwise social outliers in a society to express their selves and connect with others like never before. Social media has allowed the voice of individuals who are repressed by their family, general society, or the government, and can now make a change in a way that even voting cannot achieve. In fact, social media has often been attributed to the success of nearly all modern revolutions.

The main point to take away from this is that social media has proven that we necessarily need others around us to have fulfilling relationships or to make a great impact on someone else. We only need a platform to express ourselves and interact with others, and in the modern age, social media is that platform.