The social media has taken precedence in many aspects. More so, the young people have adopted a more advanced way to communicate known as the social media and perceived it as the ideal way of communication. There are advantages and disadvantages in relying on social media for communication.

The overall purpose of social media is for people to connect and share information regardless of where they are located geographically. As a result, continents have been able to connect and share vast information that they wouldn’t share were it not for the invention of online social platforms.

The youth make use of such platforms in different ways as described by Dannah Boyd. There are those who choose to use social media as a purely social platform to catch up and update their friends on their life events (Boyd, 2014). However, there are others who use it to learn and better their lives professionally, socially and academically.

The social media storm has swept many young people as Dannah puts it forth that, many of them are pushed to adopt a technology in which most of their friends are in. Skyler from Colorado who is 18 years of age articulate that if you are not on MySpace, you do not exist (Boyd, 2014). This clearly shows their perception on the need to make use of the platforms and to connect in all means possible.

On the other hand, Ilana brings into perspective a different view on the use of social media. She argues that over the years, there has been a drastic change in how we share information. In this regard, she articulates that the change in media that we use in communication could greatly affect the message and the intentions for the message (Allison, 2008).

As such, this is evident with how some of the social media users have taken the advantage of an open platform and used it to advance their motives. It is understood that the legitimacy of a message shared on the social media could be compromised since everyone, from anywhere can use the social media. Hence, the regulation of authentic information shared is not a guarantee anymore. While the social fostered key integrations, it has also contributed to information illegitimacy (Allison, 2008).

References

Allison, A. (2008). “Pocket Capitalism.” In Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporalities of Children and Youth, eds. Jennifer Cole and Deborah Lynn Durham. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Esp 182-193.

Boyd, D. (2014). “Introduction” in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press.