Tareq Awadallah

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA INTRODUCTION: Social media has become a big part of our lives, affecting our daily life activities, behaviors, beliefs, and thoughts. In order to understand the real effects, we need to know what social media is, its historical review, how did it start, and how it works. There is no exact and unified definition of social media, but the most common is “Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.” (Kietzmann; Kristopher, 2011). Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "social media" as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)". From those general definitions we can pin-point some properties and features of social media platforms, as follows: • • • • • They are interactive, real time internet-based platforms or applications. Users can generate their own content, by text-posts or comments, digital photos and videos, voice messages or a mixture of all. Users can create their own personal information, profiles and choose their connections. They facilitate creating of virtual communities, groups, and networks. Users can share information either publicly or privately. From those properties, we can imagine the power and influences that social media can make on each of us, and the huge amount of data it can generate. This paper will focus on social and economic effects and consequences of social media. HISTORICAL REVIEW: There are many social media platforms are launched and being used either locally or globally since the invention of computers and internet. The following are the most famous and widely-used platforms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media): • • • PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) System: launched in 1960, was developed at the University of Illinois, then in 1973 it was commercially marketed by Control Data Corporation, offering some early forms of social media features including notes, instant messaging, chat rooms, and news reports. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network): first came online in 1967. By the late 1970s, it was enhanced to support the exchange of non-government/business information and communication. Community Memory: appeared in 1973. Later it was modified to be a true electronic system called the Bulletin Board System (BBS), which was launched and first came online on February, • • • • • • • • 1978. It was a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. It had some features such as uploading and downloading data and software, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages. In early 1980s, message networks was introduced in the system to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to current email. GeoCities: one of the World Wide Web's earliest social networking websites, appeared in November 1994. It was acquired by Yahoo in January 1999, where it was the third most visited website. Classmates: founded in November 1997. It was originally created to help users find class members and colleagues from kindergarten, schools, workplaces, and the U.S. military. SixDegrees: founded in 1997. It was one of the first social networking sites, and allowed users to list friends, family members and create new connections. It provided some features such as messaging and posting bulletin board items. According to CBS news, SixDegrees is "widely considered to be the very first social networking site", as it included profiles, friends lists and school affiliations that could be used by registered users (CBS News, 2014). Friendster: a U.S. based social networking site, founded in 2002 and launched in March 2003. It allowed users to contact other members, maintain contacts, and share online content and media. It was also used for dating, discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via profiles and networks. LinkedIn: a business and employment-oriented online service, launched in May 2003, and mainly used for professional networking. It allows members to create profiles, posts, share information and make connections. MySpace: launched in August 2003. From 2005 to 2008, it was the largest social networking site in the world. It had a significant impact on pop culture and music (Molloy, 2008). Facebook: founded in 2004 initially for Harvard University students, and later its membership was expanded to other universities in the U.S. currently it’s the largest social media platform with more than 2 billion registered users. YouTube: an online video-sharing platform. Launched in February 2005. It allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to playlists, report, comment on videos, and subscribe to other users’ channels. TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA: The large number of existing and evolving social media platforms and their variety makes it difficult and challenging to define and classify them. However, marketing and social media experts mostly agree on the following types of social media (Aichner; Jacob, 2015): • • • • • Blogs. Business Networks. Collaborative Projects. Enterprise Social Networks. Forums. • • • • • • • • Microblogs. Photo Sharing. Products/Services Review. Social Bookmarking. Social Gaming. Social Networks. Video Sharing. Virtual Worlds. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS: A research shows that a regular person spends on average about 22% of his time on social networks (Nielsen Company, 2010), and it’s increasing by time due to increasing number of used smartphones (Metzger, 2016). According to statistics in 2019, it was estimated that there were 2.95 billion users of social media around the world, increased from 2.48 billion in 2017 (Statista, 2018). Thus, we can see the huge effect of social media, not only on individuals, but also on communities, countries and economics. • ECONOMIC EFFECTS: On the economic and business side, this enormous interaction with social media forced businesses to embrace the new technology, and to utilize its power to reach wider range of customers and audiences, creating new jobs and job titles that never existed before, such as “Social Media Expert”, “Social Media Marketer” and “Social Media Analyst”. Social media also contains tools that help corporates and companies to do market researches, communications, surveys, sales and promotions, products and services reviewing, and empowering their customer-oriented services, relationships and loyalty programs. Therefore, it’s very important for businesses to have their guidelines and instructions that can be applied to as much social media platforms as possible. It’s noticeable and undeniable by any regular social media user that companies are increasingly using social media for monitoring, tracking and analyzing data traffic and information about their products and brands, allowing analysts and decision makers to measure their return of investment, profits and to predict the market demand. Moreover, the financial industries also using social media as a tool to analyze markets, promoting their products and gaining an insight to future predictions and new trading opportunities. From the following diagram, we can visualize the importance of each social media type for each business function (Aichner; Jacob, 2015). Social media also helped to create new small and individual business by utilizing its tools to reach more clients and promote the sales and products. The biggest beneficial of social media are the Ecommerce corporates and companies, where they are using social media extensively to spread out their promotions and reach new customers as much as they can. The following diagram describes the huge impact of social media on E-commerce sales in USA (Supply Chain Quarterly, 2011). This new business environment supports the growth of economy, builds new standards of competition and shapes and definition of market winners and sustainable businesses. • SOCIAL EFFECTS: Social media initially was created to fulfill a basic human and psychological need, which is communication. As humans, we need to communicate and interact with each other, exchange information and build relationships. However, with increasing number of smartphones and easy access to social media platforms, users spend more time on social media. This issue brings up some social effects and consequences. Some studies showed that lonely individuals are more likely to use social media to look for emotional and psychological support from others (Morahan-Martin; Schumacher, 2003). According to Sherry Turkle, in her book “Alone Together”, people tend to act differently online and are less afraid to hurt each other's feelings. Moreover, other studies showed that extraversion and openness have a positive relationship with social media, while emotional stability has a negative sloping relationship with social media (Correa; Hinsley, 2009). The excessive use of social media as individual may cause the case known as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), which is defined as “the pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent" (Przybylski; Murayama; DeHaan; Gladwell, 2013). It’s a form of social anxiety, characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing" ((Przybylski; Murayama; DeHaan; Gladwell, 2013). It has a negative effect on user’s psychological health as it could emphasize a negative mood or depression (Wortham, 2011). Another form of social disorder caused by social media is Self-dissatisfaction. People tend to be less satisfied about their lives as they spend more time on social media (Chan, 2014). This would lead to a serious issue know as Cyberbullying, where it happens when people are criticized or not accepted on social media, they feel emotional pain (Chen, 2015). All these issue could lead to problems related to selfconfidence and self-satisfaction. However, there is a bright side of social media regarding individual health issues. Social media can be a good source of health-related information, tips and activities which can lead to improve individual mental and physical health condition. In a clinical study involving teenagers who are have obesity issues, they expressed that they lost some weight by following social media content, and by getting support and encouraging from other users with similar issues (Holmberg; Berg; Dahlgren; Lissner; Chaplin, 2018). PERSONAL INFORMATION PRIVACY AND SECURITY: The protection of personal information has been a controversial subject in many media sources, especially after the scandal of Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm hired during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. During 2018, hearing sessions were held in the American Senate Council, questioning several of social media companies’ CEO’s, in response to the scandal. The most important question was pointed to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, which was about how a third party entity could reach and harvest the personal information and profiles of 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. This point was like a knife-stab in the heart of security and privacy capabilities of social media platforms. From this incident, we can figure out that personal information privacy and security measures are not the top priorities of social media companies or their management members. Regardless all security measures and checks available, those information still can be hacked or commercialized by the social media platform itself, in order to gain money and acquire higher market share. In 2014, a research was conducted by Pew Research Center, about privacy issues in social media in the USA. The results showed that 91% of Americans "agree" or "strongly agree" that people have lost control over the collection of their personal information by different companies and organizations. About 80% of social media users expressed their concern about advertisers and businesses accessing the data they shared on social media platforms, and 64% believe that the government should do more to regulate advertisers. CONCLUSION: The power of social media is undeniable, and it’s one of the great inventions of modern life in 20th century. It has the ability to shape our lives, thoughts and beliefs. However, it still a tool with two sides, as anything else we are using in our daily life activities, it has advantages and disadvantages. A user can benefit from social media by getting new information, connections, and knowledge. On the other hand, a harm can be caused by social media, either on individual or community scale. I believe that the content ownership and privacy is completely user’s responsibility, so every user is accountable for any digital form of information they publish on social media, because once that information is published, it’s no longer private. REFERENCES: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Kietzmann, J. H.; Hermkens, K.; McCarthy, I. P.; and Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. p. 241-251. Retrieved May 2, 2020. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/18103 Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Social media. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, Social media, Retrieved May 2, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media CBS News. (2014). Then and now: a history of social networking sites. https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/ Molloy, F. (2008). 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