the sociology essay

the sociology essay

The Impact of Social Media on Modern Society: A Sociological Perspective

1. Introduction

At a time when social media is having a significant impact on the collective life of society, concerns have been expressed about decreased privacy, self-esteem, changes in self-presentation, park participation, and many other social activities. This present generation is more aware than any generation since the baby boom generation of the persistent monitor. These early fears of social media turned out to be of an alarmist nature and a cyclical pattern that accompanies the introduction of many expanding media, including telegraph, radio, television, and various Internet applications. Developmental patterns of the uses and non-uses of social media have shown little change over recent years, except for the medium that includes historical discretionary constraints and the social relationships that involve real people interacting with the lives of the individual. Through the observations and propositions issued in the current paper, this study will add to the growing body of knowledge that addresses the positive and negative aspects associated with the issue of continued social media use.

This paper will examine the various social aspects of the utilization of social media over the course of the last decade. It has been hypothesized that this increased use and reliance on social media is having deleterious consequences for the social fabric of society. Based on a broad range of theoretical perspectives, including Marx and Durkheim, we examine the paper’s main hypothesis. After presenting our core theoretical framework, we explore in some detail the social capital and loneliness components of social media as they affect new generations. This is an important study for a variety of reasons. It allows us to update and further research on close relationships, weak ties, and social capital with the use of social media. It also allows us to draw some conclusions about the increasing social isolation of individuals because of the role social media now plays in society. If people begin to prefer the pre-recorded memory of their experiences to the moment-to-moment living of it, the end result is the accumulation of many pre-mediated events and the loss of any personal logic for self-remembering.

2. Theoretical Frameworks in Sociology and Social Media

3.1 The Community Approach Another major theoretical approach to social media focuses on the manner in which people socialize and form communities in that space. There is a long-standing tradition in scholarship on new media and specifically virtual communities. A virtual community is defined as an aggregation of individuals who exist largely in the form of computer-mediated communication but who have an identity or common purpose. In the beginning days of social media, the idea was that individuals could with these technologies form a relationship in a way that they had not done with earlier forms of mass and computer-mediated media. Today, however, the expression is far more complicated and negotiated in a variety of more traditional digital spaces. This framework is important both to provide that historical context for our burgeoning knowledge of social media and also to reflect on more recent approaches for adapting and understanding social media given dramatic shifts in both the media and the social contexts.

Theoretically, sociologists have framed social media in a variety of ways to understand the new forms of communication that have arisen. One of the most basic is as a tool, or an augmentation to, existing communication processes and networks. This approach sees social media as bringing about unique, new, or qualitative changes to existing social structures or human relationships. A second view is instrumental, or as medium, and has come to be the most popular for scholars of social media. This perspective asserts that social media are technologies that facilitate and mediate human communication from a distance. Whether media are or are not social, this approach is directed to understanding the manner in which the technologies of communication affect the social exchange of information itself, rather than the relationships inherent in these exchanges.

3. Social Media and Identity Formation

In establishing an online representation of one’s self through an SNS (Social Networking Site), some have argued that members must decide on a more fundamental level as to who they are structurally—whether they are the sum of multiple profiles or a more sharply defined and singular model. Opportunities to add photos and bios can become self-representations. Through interactions in chat rooms, for example, members level self-descriptions, allowing one to present his or her favorite unitizing/eager select activities. In a study of blog self-presentation, members were shown to provide detailed self-descriptions within their virtual environment, allowing one to foster connections and create supportive online relationships. Blogging, then, is a personal publishing tool, allowing members to manage, present, and control both the participants, potentially all classes, and the information they receive media and the society around them. Provide them. Blogs are fueled by self-presentation. Explore, interact, and publish their thoughts, generating a virtual self in the process.

One of the most discussed phenomena in social media usage is identity formation. Some have argued that social media creates a safe environment for members to explore their interests and identities without the expense of significant risk or consequences. It has been suggested that these sites provide members up to 10 different ways of communicating with each other on everyday matters and can contain either 100 percent truthful information or ‘lightly self-disclosing’ profiles. Many use social media as an exercise in self-expression and as a way of ‘introducing, or in some cases re-introducing, themselves to others, and/or managing their identities. It has been argued that one widely recognized function of these sites is to help members facilitate social interactions.

4. Social Media and Social Movements

Although the literature is inconclusive, the rise of social media has also had some profound effects on citizen-initiated and social-issue, interest, and identity-based political mobilization and representation. This review argues from a sociological perspective that politics, protest, civil societies, and social movements tend to contain not only national but also some sub- and transnational dimensions along with being a rather mutually constitutive set of functions. Political sociology traditionally has focused on the systemic nature of politics, the public nature, common good, public debate, monopolistic violence, stratification, and structure of citizenship—they can be traced back to Tocqueville, Durkheim, Weber, or Simmel. It also deals with the evolution of structures of conflict and political welfare regimes in the nation-state context.

Social movements and social media have long had a transactional relationship. New communication infrastructure empowers taste publics online, which in turn influence public debate. Specific citizen and interest groups occasionally gain relevant local knowledge through social media, which can be part of essential constituencies in hybrid governance arenas. Again, a sociological perspective encompasses system-relevant analysis. Politics are interconnected with the good society and economy in specific country settings. Moreover, it is not just a question of how to curb mechanisms that foster inequities and solidarity. It’s about safeguarding democracy, society, and solidarity when societal pressure rises. This is what a good society is about, and social change needs to be legitimate – be it in reforming institutions or changing conceptions of how solidary we understand being in a globalized world.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

We conducted studies based on data from college students, which, under circumstances in which people of multiple age brackets are active, cannot definitively represent the peculiarities of the various demographic aspects, apart from the method related purposes. Our research communicated with college students to gain data. For this reason, franchise operators focusing on the consumption behavior of college students should feel free to use our research results to act as the basis for their plans. Regarding this research, as this research was completed between 2009 and 2011, as of 2019, the distance from the present makes it possible to take perspectives based on the variables with higher frequency. Thus, this comment provides a perspective on the several distinguished changes that we observed.

We conclude by discussing practical implications and future research directions for this study. Similar to face-to-face interaction, it is essential for consumers to also maintain online interpersonal relationships within the context of social media, as they are directly tied to social satisfaction and the accumulation of social capital. Although social media has many advantages, excessive use can yield negative consequences, the importance of which we have revealed. Most likely, factors such as this can be measured via data, aspects of social media for which future research designed to provide more detailed information will be a key development issue going forward.