Today, social media is viewed as a bad thing, that’s brainwashing our kids “All you do is sit on your butt and play on your phone” is a common phrase that many teens have heard from someone at one point or another. Social media is perceived as a dangerous, unhealthy way to interact but people are missing the big idea. Social media has helped today’s society to create relationships, connect communities, and improve

Before social media the only people you could really communicate with were those who lived in close proximity to you. Not allowing people to have relationships with those across the world because of geographic boundaries. But social media  has allowed people to share their lives with others that could possibly be interested in the same things or even be a long lost family member or friend catching up on a heartfelt picture of an elementary school friends new dog.  In ‘Don’t Fear the Network: The Internet is Changing the Way We Communicate For The Better’, Writer Seth Masket talks about how even before social people could communicate long distance but social media “adds on to them increasing the overall volume of contact.” What the writer means by this is social media has enhanced and improved communication between long distance relationships.

When people hear the word community they think of a group of people connected for the same reasons or common interests. Many people nowadays believe that communities are becoming unconnected due to social media because of how often it’s used in place of actual conversation.But what they don’t realize is that social media is only making communities more connected. In ‘I Knew You Before I Met You: How Social Media Changed The Way We Communicate’,Journalist Jennifer Brannock Cox talks about how the town of San Francisco came together to make a young boys dream of being batman come true. The use of the Make-A-Wish foundations social media campaign enabled the community to come together for a common cause and connect over the common love of helping people. Another way social media allows communities to stay connected is by creating a social media account run by the city to let everyone know what events and activities are going on. By doing that it givens citizens of that city or town the opportunity to get out and interact with their community.

When people think of making friends, they think of meeting someone in elementary school and staying friends for life but with today’s technology and social media there are new ways to find your best friend.Jennifer Brannock Cox states that the ability to share interests online “can lead to meaningful in-person encounters.” Social media can also allow people to openly share their ideas online and keep the lines of communication open across the world. For example by having a Facebook someone could create a page for their passion about horseback riding and by making that it allows other people interested in the same things to become connected.

While being able to connect and interact with strangers on the internet can create friendships it can also be very dangerous if too much personal information gets out. On social media the ability to find out someone’s is very easy, and the ability to find out where someone can also be somewhat easy.

.It’s true that being able to find out someone’s information on social media can be easy; there are many ways to protect personal information. On many social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat there are settings that can be applied so that all of the person's information is hidden to anyone they don’t want to know about it. The only way people could see anything about them would be if the person whose account it was allowed them to follow them and see who they were. So using the privacy settings provided for them can help make sure that whatever they choose to share with family and friends on social media is protected.

With modern technology and communication changing every day, I challenge you to find a way to see how social media may fit into your life to help you find new ways of interacting with others and help show that social media isn’t as bad as people make it out to be.