To begin with, with time, social networks have become very important in this era. They help people to engage with people they know and even those who they do not know. With the help the help of the internet, user can also share stuffs about themselves on social media. Social networking sites allow people to be entertained with the contents posted. Also, users can now get to know about what is happening across the world by using social media. Social networking sites are now part of the daily lives of people and users cannot imagine their lives without the internet and social media (Boyd, 2007).

In the first position, social media is a type of entertainment for people in a way that people interact and share contents with other users of different social media platforms for not only communicating messages to them but also to entertain them. For example, we have now reached an era where people use Instagram and Facebook mostly to share memes. Furthermore, there are social networking platforms which are especially meant for entertainment purpose and people are addicted to these. An example is YouTube, which was founded to make vlogs and to share videos for entertaining the consumers. Also, in order to entertain the users or YouTube, youtubers have to be creative when it comes to the video they are making. Therefore, YouTube is a social media platform which is creative and also provides information (Crick, 2016). For example, nowadays many people use YouTube to get information about any topics they want to know. This makes people addictive to the platform in a way that, if ever people need to do some research on their own; they will skip that step and go directly on YouTube to find out about something. The author also states that communities are formed on YouTube. The communities can be in different kinds such youtubers themselves form a community as they are the content creators and sharers. Then another community can be formed as a community of subscribers of a YouTube channel. Even the ones commenting on videos form a different type of community since they are engaging on the social media platform along with the different people, whom they do not know all over the world. YouTube is a kind of addiction for the users in the sense that if a user likes to see the vlogs of their favorite YouTubers, he or she will stay updated with what is being featured on their YouTube channels.

In the second position, social media indeed help people to keep in touch. But in order to keep in touch, users of social media should add each other as friend like on Facebook for example. These friends can be people that already know each other or they can also be unknown people who are trying to make new friends (Boyd, 2006). Social networks are a new way of how people get in touch with other people all over the globe. This is a way of getting in touch with new people, which leads into forming new friendships behind the screens. Many people do this because they really want to be friend with strangers from abroad and they are more likely to reveal their real identity when they are serious about their friendships. Boyd (2006) describes friendship as a feeling where there is mutual love amongst the friends but it can also be denoted that not all friendship are real on social media. People cannot be attached to each other when they get used to chatting or video calling their virtual friends but it does not really mean that the friendship is real. Yet, users of social media gets addicted to the people they do not really know in real life just by chatting with them online every day. Another argument which is put forward is some people keep track of the people they already know. For example, many people use social networking sites to keep in touch with their family, friends or any closed ones who live abroad. Without the internet and their social media, it would have been difficult for people to keep in touch with their loved ones, frequently. (Boyd, 2007) supports this idea by stating that social networking sites act like a medium as an extension of communication in between individuals who already know each other and also meet each other whether it is frequently or not.

Thirdly, the argument that social networks are like a kind of medium among individuals is supported by the statement that, social media is not only used to forge new friendship but it is also a tool for businesses to keep in touch with their clients (Donath and Boyd, 2004). All businesses have adopted the methodology of keeping in touch with their clients via platforms of social media. This helps businesses in flourishing in some way, as they can market their products online and also they can communicate with people through their inbox but also through the comment section. Huberman et al (2009) maintain this idea by also mentioning that social media platforms are being exploited by the marketing aspect. Customers can also provide their feedback on the pages of the business, which can help business to know about the level of satisfaction of their clients. Also, normal people can sell and stuffs through social media by posting products in online buying or selling groups. This make businesses and people succeed in selling their products and also buyers to buy these products as the level of engagement on social networking sites helps in achieving a high level of target audience. Thus, businesses become addictive to social media in the way that, they will always expect that their customers will communicate with them through social media and they also use social media for their marketing instead of using traditional forms of media.

Fourthly, another way of engagement is that political activists make use of social media as a way to target people to support them and their political parties (Huberman et al., 2009). Many politicians now use Facebook to show that they are working for the people of their country, by posting pictures or even videos to prove that they are really meeting up with people who need their support. At the same time, they use the same platforms to put down their political rivals. They try to show off all the good deeds they are doing for the benefit of the country and the people. Many politicians adopted this mean of communication in order to attain the highest level of audiences and also for their personal gains (Bennett, 2012). Whenever, the election is near all politicians will put their vision on social networking sites and this will help them to receive comments and feedbacks from their audiences. In some cases, the audiences themselves end up in giving ideas to the future ministers or deputies while engaging with them via social media. This demonstrates that information is not only being shared by the political but also being given by the people. People share their problems on social media which acts like information being given to the politician. The ones who use social media are mostly those who are in the opposition parties, those who are against the government. This makes politicians addictive to social media in a way that they will keep themselves updated about issues people are facing and also to use this as a strategy to win trust from the public.

Fifthly, Social media now helps countries in gaining more tourists (Germann Molz and Paris, 2013). Tourism is one of the aspects that is being promoted by social networking sites, more specifically because of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The authors add that now tourists use their social media platforms to learn about any country they want to visit. Those who are addicted to traveling can also view pictures, videos or even feedback of other tourists or local people on pages of places which are touristic. This will give them a new addiction like as they may view pictures daily on these platforms. Nowadays, Instagram acts like a major tool in attracting foreigners to visit different countries. The way that both professional and amateur photographers post pictures on Instagram can easily attract a great number of tourists to their countries. Thus, it can be said that when we speak about social media in terms of providing information, even a photo acts like an information when it comes to not only tourism but also in different fields.

However, it should be considered that not all memes are share for the idea of entertaining people. There are memes which are created in order to somehow create awareness about poverty, or sometimes about cruelty towards animals. Then in those memes, they mention “1 like = 1 prayer” or sometimes they come up with memes mentioning if you don’t want your mum to die, share this post”. These memes are very annoying when to the users (Dobson & Knezevic, 2018). When they post “1 like=1 prayer, or $1”, it does not mean that the sick person or poor person is really receiving that prayer and the amount of money based upon the number of likes that people have clicked. This develops a sort of addiction in the mind of some people. Like, they will always share these kinds of posts when they see these posts. While other people are addicted when it comes to these posts in a way that they always comment ‘Amen’. They can instantly react to these posts without even thinking. Instead of doing stuffs like this, people could come up with better ideas such as doing fund raising to help gather a certain amount of money for real to help out the people in need.

In addition, some people do make new friends on social media but they do this for the sake of gaining popularity (Boyd, 2006). An example is using Facebook to add a lot of people, just for the sake of becoming popular on that social media and also to get a lot of reactions, comments or share when uploading posts, pictures and videos. Another example is using Instagram as a way to get the maximum number of followers. They also use their story as a way to do shout outs for their followers so that in return the followers also do the same for them just to earn more followers. As mentioned above that social networking sites act like a mean to help people communicating with new friends and also to keep in touch with closed ones. But, this is not the case as in today’s world social media is a way of escapism for some individuals. They use have friends on social media but not in real life. People get addicted to other individuals through social media but they neglect the people living in the same household or the same society as them. What is the use of having so many followers on Instagram and not having a single person by your side when you are sick? I can be denoted that social media is making people so greedy on a virtual society rather than in the real world and the real society they live in. People can be having many friends virtually but someday, when they will need these friends to support them in moments of hardship, the same virtual friends they have will never be able to help them out. Therefore, in contradiction to the argument mentioned by Boyd (2007) social media is fading away the friendship and eradicating the way of communicating in the real world.

Also, when it comes to businesses in maintaining good relationship with their customers, this is something quite hard for the businesses (Dijkmans et al., 2015). Once a particular brand or business starts gaining popularity, it becomes difficult for the business to keep in touch with their clients. But, a lot of businesses recruit workers to maintain that communication in a way for not letting their business rivals take over themselves and also to maintain the reputation they have gain because once their clients lose trust in them, they will start losing their reputation. This will lead them into losing their clients and also this might bring their business down. Therefore, it can be said that social media is here to facilitate businesses and clients to maintain a good relationship between each other but they should maintain their communication level like it all started. Even if the flowin communication is not the same, the business should try adopt new strategies on the social media itself. For example if a small local business has gained over 5000 followers and per day, the business’ page is receiving about 100 messages, it will be difficult for that business to interact with all those 100 clients instantly. In that case, businesses should adopt a kind of strategy like for example, post on their walls that they would revert back as soon as possible or they can also put it on automatic reply mode.

To conclude, social networking sites permit people to create their profiles in order to connect and share information to other people, who are not only known by them but also to the ones unknown (Boyd, 2007). Furthermore, people use social media to be entertained while also some consider some features such as some memes and sarcastic posts as being annoying. Social media has made people become addictive to it in a manner that they are dependent on it in various fields. Also, social media has a high level of active audiences who are addictive users, which is beneficial for businesses, political activists and parties. But, both businesses and political activists should know how to maintain a very good level of engagement with the people. They should always make sure that queries are never left without any replies. It is also derived that information is also shared in various forms on different social networking sites.

Reference List:

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