Social Media and the Internet

What does it really mean to be social today? There’s no real answer to this but for most it means being connected through social media sites in this digital age. In most “social” gatherings in 2016 you’ll find a group of individuals who usually share common interests, but can’t seem to put their phones down to be social at that moment. Most people are connected to multiple social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and twitter. In the article titled “How Social Media Has Changed Us: The Good and The Bad””, it breaks down all the pros and cons that social media brings to modern day people. According to the article, the good that social media brings is immediate access to information, pervasive connectivity to Others, globalized voices. The cons, according to the article, are selfies, political tirades, anonymity of the web and the amplification of ignorance. Through social media a person can become whoever they want by creation of desirable profile. Also, the internet always keeps record of every and anything we post so we must always be mindful of what we post and our online “friends”. In the New York Times article titled “The Web Means the End of Forgetting”, we learn the story of Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa. who lost her job over an inappropriate photo posted on Myspace. After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites.