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Around seven out of ten Americans (72%) use social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, up from 26% in 2008. On social media sites, users may develop biographical profiles, communicate with friends and strangers, do research, and share thoughts, photos, music, links, and more.
SixDegrees.com, which existed from 1997-2001, is considered the first social networking site because it allowed users to create personal spaces and connect to friends online. Friendster, created in 2002, popularized social networking in the United States but was quickly outpaced by other social networking sites such as MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006), Pinterest (2009), and Google+ (2012).
During the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in 2020, Americans consumed about 53 minutes of news per day, according Flixed, a site that provides “cord cutting” tools for people looking to ditch their cable boxes. That was an increase of 22 minutes. Facebook was the primary social media platform source for coronavirus news (35.8% of people surveyed), followed by Twitter (17.0%) and YouTube (16.3%). People who turned to Reddit as their primary social media news source about the pandemic were most likely to report a decline in their mental health (57.6%), followed by Twitter (43%), then Facebook (41.6%).
PRO
- Social media promotes community that can translate into or supplement offline relationships.
- Social media encourages civic and political responsibility.
- Social media bolsters inclusivity and diversity on- and offline.
CON
- Social media promotes cyberbullying that spills into offline life.
- Social media encourages the spread of misinformation.
- Social media increases privacy risks across the Internet.
This article was published on Nov. 18, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.