  My research question is the development of social media makes society better or worse. As we all know, people can’t live without social media because social media relates to our normal life and its influence is getting strong. According to the rapid development of technology, there are more and more people enjoy using social media to solve problems. And also, it is because the functions of social media are becoming more and more powerful. For example, I chat with my friends, share my photos on Wechat, follow my idols on Weibo and Instagram... In the meantime, some reports show that people have different views on social media because the social media develops too fast and people can’t control social media very well. Teenagers were deceived because they used social media to contact with strangers, some unscrupulous merchants post false information on social media to attract people. People’s attitude to social media is complicated. For me, social media brings more benefits into my life, I believe the social media makes the society better. And followings are my opinions.

  In different countries, the most popular social media is different. I’m familiar with wechat, which is absolutely most popular social media in China. In the beginning, wechat is just a social media for people to contact with their family, friends. And the population of wechat users is getting larger, so the wechat is also convenience for doing business. The developers of wechat are so smart that they add many new functions to the wechat, and I’m going to introduce some applications that I think is useful. For example, people can book hotels, book train tickets and movie tickets, order food delivery through wechat; all these applications are convenience. What’s more, you can link your bank card to wechat for transfer your money to your family or friends, and you can refill your phone account. My life is becoming more convenience because of wechat. The functions of wechat are more than social media. Just like the “WeChat is there “at every point of your daily contact with the world, from morning until night” (The Economist, 3) It is obviously that social media is not only for communication with people, also it can help you do a lot of things. What’s more, the social media is still developing, and we can expect more through the social media. 

  Social media is also a way to evaluate the service industry such as hotels, restaurants. This weekend, I meet a lady on my way to food lion and she is my uber driver. She told me that she just moved from Hawaii and she was looking for a Korean restaurant. She wanted me to introduce some delicious Korean restaurants, but I can’t remember the name of the restaurant. So I told her that she could search Korean restaurant on yelp or google map, and it will show a list of Korean restaurants with its review. And I’m sure this lady will find a good Korean restaurant through these social media. As the power of social media said “Social media analytics ‘is concerned with developing and evaluating informatics tools and frameworks to collect, monitor, analyze, summarize, and visualize social media data ... to facilit[ate] conversations and interactions ... to extract useful patterns and intelligence...’” (Fan, Gordon, 2). Not only for restaurants, sometimes we can search the stores, apartments and see the reviews to decide whether you go or not. It leads me to talk about the business effect of social media. 

How social media works during the business? “Social media is most relevant to the design-development and utilization stages; also, social media analytics helps companies gather competitive intelligence and understand more completely their business environments, suppliers, and competitors.” (Fan, Gordan) Social media are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations and individuals. We can read some travel strategy through social media, and the author will introduce the detail of their trip, sometimes they will give you some tips about the hotels they live, such as the bed of this hotel is not soft enough, great place to stay, free parking… According to their strategy, readers can decide the hotel is good or not. Also, the hotels will invite some famous internet blogger to live in their hotels and post an article on social media for attracting more people visit their hotels. “Social media is changing the business landscape and redefining how businesses communicate across their channels of distribution and with their customers.” (Beitelspacher, Grewal, Hughes, 2) The communication between customers and merchants is not only for hotels, but it's also for all the merchants that can communicate on social media. We can see social media make entrepreneurs earn more money, and it brings more business opportunities for entrepreneurs and customers. And because there are more and more people are using social media to help them make choices, there are more and more companies would like to use social media to advertise their business. “Social media usage is also extending beyond business-to-consumer (B2C) settings and becoming more apparent in the business-to-business (B2B) community. More than 93% of B2B marketers use one or more forms of social media to interact with their customers (Holden-Bache 2011), and as of 2010, Fortune 100 companies averaged 20 social media accounts each, which they used to communicate with customers, corporate partners, end consumers, and other stakeholders.” (Beitelspacher, Grewal, Hughes, 3). This also improves that social media brings more positive influence to society. 

  How can we know the news before social media appears? Before social media exist, people always get news through newspaper and television. But now, “A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. adults reported seeing news on social media” (Gottfried, Shearer, 1) When will we use social media except communicating with our friends? Personally, I use it when I get bored. And I can know a lot of information through social media. For example, last week I was refreshing my Facebook page and I saw the news about the basketball game between South Carolina and Duke. I know the Beauty and the Beast was on March 17 through Youtube. Social media takes the biggest part of the way I get news. Also, I get news by chance because the news will show on the social media as notifications. “According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January, 35 percent of respondents between ages 18 and 29 said that social media was the “most helpful” source of information about the presidential campaign.” (Curry, 3) It shows that more and more people rely on social media for news and information. What’s more, “Sometimes it seems that Twitter is the Trump campaign’s main way to communicate his message.” (curry, 1) It is a joke, but as we all know, social media has its influence on political participation, especially when politicians post their thoughts on social media, people will comment on the politicians’ words, communicate with the politicians, which is good because the politicians can know people’s thoughts when they communicate. Not only for politics, but I also used to watch movies, TV series, listened to music whatever Chinese, Korean or English. Social media connect the different culture. After I’m addicted to the stars, I liked to follow their news on social media, shared their news with my friends was my interest. Also, stars use social media to post their selfie, share their thoughts with fans through social media. What’s more, there is a thing tells people that social media can helps people to find their family. There is an old man lives in Taiwan, and he moved to Taiwan by himself because of the war. He thought his family all dead, but just in 2016, his grandchild post his picture on social media, after few days, he found his cousin through the social media. It surprised many people. Also, this improves how powerful social media is. 

   “When a teen cancer sufferer began keeping a video blog of how she uses make-up to draw attention to her facial features instead of her chemotherapy-induced baldness, she served as an inspiration to so many people that cosmetics giant Cover Girl took notice.” (Hootsuite, 5), we should know that social media brings more positive affect to us. Social media is not only a way of communicating with people, also is a way to share hope and courage to people who need hope and courage. There are many videos of good values on Youtube such as, charity organization helps homeless dogs and cats which make people know taking care of animals is our responsibility. A girl who doesn’t have hands still can write with her feet which encourage millions of people. Also, social media makes children more confident. “In fact, according to a report last year by the nonprofit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, one in five teens said social media makes them feel more confident, compared with 4% who said it makes them feel less so.” (Wallace, 8) “For the many who rushed to give blood to the Boston Red Cross, and those who donated to campaigns for Japan and Haiti, social media has become a catalyst for charitable donations. From a grassroots effort by creditors to raise over $80,000 for an orphanage in Kenya, to the over $200,000 college fund raised for a 9-year-old named Caine after an inspiring video of him working hard on a homemade arcade went viral.” (Hootsuite,3) Social media also help people who need help to solve the problem quickly. For teens, I think the government is trying to protect teens. The government uses the policy to protect the teenagers when they play social media. Such as, you need to fill your information about your age when you watch some videos on Youtube because the movie might have the violence plot. 

  Back to the original purpose of social media, communication. Social media makes a huge communication’s change in the world. “As communication and information travel faster and faster, the world seems to get smaller and smaller.” (Edwards, 1) As an international student in U.S., my family lives in China, and I can’t meet them about one year or half year. But, due to social media, I can use voice call or video call to see them and talk to them every day if I get homesick. It is a huge change because before social media exist, people use letters or fax to communicate and it is inefficiency. “Before social media, we were extremely limited in our means to interact with others, and we were limited largely to the people that we knew in-person. There were things we (those my age and older) had to deal with that millennials do not have to – your significant other’s parent answering the phone when you called, waiting for a letter in the mail, waiting a week to get your pictures that you sent off to be developed, and so on.” (Edwards, 2) How can two different company communicate when they want to work together on a program? How can they have met at the same time? Social media. For me, when I was going to high school in U.S., I wanted to join in the activity in China during the summer. But this activity needed to take an interview before June. And my flight ticket is in July. How can I take an interview with people live in China? Social media helps my interview, I used Skype to take an interview, and I took the activity successfully. For an employee, social media still has its benefits. “Businesses that implement an internal communication platform see many benefits, both in terms of profits and employee satisfaction. Internal communication platforms facilitate faster decision making, easier collaboration on projects and greater recognition for employees that do a good job. Take a closer look at these benefits.

1.Faster Decision Making: Employees can quickly communicate problems without waiting for the next meeting to happen because they can instantly see who is online. This makes decision making faster, which can improve profits and productivity.

2.Easier Collaboration on Projects: Many projects rely on work from several different individuals. Instead of trying to schedule meetings where everyone involved can participate, internal communication platforms allow employees to track and record all progress in one place where everyone can access it, helping expedite projects.

3.Greater Recognition for Employees: Employee satisfaction is another aspect that can be boosted with internal communication systems. For instance, it is easier to give immediate feedback after a project has been reviewed. Additionally, updates about the quality of the work employees can be highlighted to the entire organization.” (Cassidy, 3) Time is money, social media makes employees simpler, and it saves the time of applicant and hirer. What’s more, employees on social media saves the money from transportation of people who take the meeting. 

  In conclusion, the development of social media makes society better. We admit that some people are easily affected by social media, and it does harm to people. But we need to realize that the world is getting better because of the social media. People can use social media to talk with their family when they stay in different countries; people can use social media to schedule their travel plans, especially, with the continuous development of social media, people can solve some problems quickly. In China, some poor people have a serious illness, and they don’t have enough money to cure themselves. Social media will help them to get help from charitable organization real fast. Social media makes our life more convenience.  In a word, I believe that social media can make people live a better life and also everyone who uses the social media has the response to make social media a useful tool in our society.
