Mackenzie TuckerProfessor LoveEnglish 10118 November 2013Social Media Pros and Cons You go out to dinner and look at the couple next to you; the entire time through theirdate they sit on their phones checking all their social media apps without interacting. This is whatour world has come to from the uproar of social media in our culture. Social media has many pros and cons on our generation, but it is headed for something bigger. The effects of social media on our generation is controversial, it helps our society figure out things faster, but it also makes people focus all their extra time on the social media apps. Social media is also headed for a new direction, in which will probably change the time people look at social media. I think social media is headed in even a more negative direction because it is taking the attention span ofa lot of American’s. There is a lot of controversy on whether social media is positive or negative in our generation. A positive effect of social media on our culture is that it helps spread important information about a crisis in our country extremely fast. Social media is the top news source, even higher than TV news channels and the paper. The news is posted all over social media, which helps citizens find out faster. Another positive effect of social media is that it helps keep people connected. It helps keep people updated with their friends, because people can stream videos, pictures, etc. This allows other friends to see their posts. It also helps people form new relationships with friends online, because it is easier for people to talk over text than in real person. A negative effect is that it can of social media hurt peoples GPA and homework grades if they are heavy social media users. This takes into effect because when you are doing your homework or studying for a test you get distracted by social media like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Myspace and Instagram. This affects your test grades because whenyou are supposed to be concentrating on preparing for your test, you become sidetracked and start looking at social media. Then you never go back to studying for your test so it hurts you in the long run. Another con of social media that affects American is that it can rapidly spread false information all over the internet. An example of this would be like when someone posted that Justin Bieber died in a car crash on Twitter, it spread across Twitter so fast, people actually thought it was a true thing. Also a con of social networking is that it is extremely easy for someone to steal your identity, because random people can take your name and make a fake profile about you with false information that isn’t even true. People make fake profiles on Facebook under another person’s name, and pretend to be someone that they aren’t An example of this is when people go on dating websites they get into a real relationship online with someonethat they have never meet before. They never know if it is the real person, or an imposter that hasmade up a fake profile that isn’t really them. Social media became popular very fast. The last five years is when it really became extremely popular because different companies were making all these different social media apps. I think that social media is headed towards becoming even bigger than it already is right now. I feel like people will only use social media to communicate. People won’t even text or call anymore. Also, what will increase, is the amount of time people will spend on this website. Rightnow people use it on average of about 3 hours a day, and in the future it will probably increase toabout 4-6 hours daily. I also think that the social media sights that are popular now like Twitter, and Instagram are going to die down and not be that popular because new social media apps withmore technology will be invented and then more people will use the new apps than the old ones. Just like Facebook used to be really popular about 3 years ago with my age generation, and now it has died down and older people close to my mom and grandparents age are using it. Another topic of social media is the legal concerns of it. When people make there statuses lyrics of songsand fail to mention the artist, you are taking credit for their words and that is against the law. That is a major problem on Twitter and Facebook because people forgot to mention the artists name and then it is turns into a legal problem, when you were just simply typing about a song that you liked and wanted to share it with your friends. My assessment of social media is that it does help out our generation in a positive way because you do find out about events a lot faster than you would through like the news or a newspaper, but I feel like we spend way too much time checking these apps and wasting countless hours on them every day. I feel like sometimes it is just a waste of time, because you are looking at other people’s lives, when you should just have fun living your own. According to new research released by Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange, “Americans aged 18-64 who use social networks say they spend an average of 3.2 hours per day doing so. This is ridiculous fact that I found because it’s crazy that we spend a third of our average day looking at social media, when we could be doing so many other things that are way more productive. But I still think that there is good things that have come from social media being invented. I do use social media a lot,but I feel like it would be better if people could spend just a little less time worrying about social media, and focus on more important things going on in our everyday culture. Social media is a reality of Americans, because it influences a lot of the decisions we make and do. When Americans see what a celebrity posted on Twitter, they do exactly as it says, and follow their ideas. It is also a daily thing that most Americans check on a daily basis so that too is also a reality of Americans. In conclusion, social media is very controversial and has a lot of pros and cons as well. It helps us figure out information faster than we normally would, but also causes us to waste countless hours on the apps as well. It also headed towards becoming even more popular than it is now and will probably take over even more hours of people’s life. Also my assessment ofsocial media is it connect easier, but takes over too much time in our lives. Overall, social media has