Running head: THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

The Effects of Social Media on Society and Business

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

The Effects of Social Media on Society and Business

There is no doubt that social media has a great influence on business and society these
days. Since its original form was Open Diary, found by Bruce and Susan (Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2010) until now it has been expanded to many different types such as blog, forum,
social networking sites, typically Facebook, Twitter It is true that this type of media has
contributed well to organizations operation, nonstop of this effected to behaviors, life style of
individuals and society. However, everything has two opposite sites and social media also
owns both advantages and disadvantages. The analysis below provides the detail of its
drawbacks basing on the obvious benefits to users even organizations or individuals could
understand well and behave correctly.
Positive Effects of Social Media on Society
Connecting people
Social network sites are the easy and convenient places to connect and keep in touch
with ones friends and relations. It helps to build better relationships and communicate by
chatting with friends and everyone. Once accessed, the system can send out an invitation for
everybody in ones contact list to join with. Therefore, ones relations will be enlarged day by
day.
World is flat
With social networks, communications are no longer encompassed by limited
boundaries and geographic regions. It allows everyone communicate with someone located
across the globe. For example, the people in England can chat with the people in Vietnam or
in everywhere has networks. With social media, the users are able to share their thoughts and
perceptions over different topics with a large number of audiences

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

Supporting large information in many fields

The social networks are a wellspring of information. Everyone can access online to
find information about many fields such as health, economy, culture, society, etc. Information
travels rapidly across the network and can be disseminated with ease. However, there are
always two sides of everything, so the users need to choose suitable information when using
the social networks.
Positive Effects of Social Media on Business
Customer Relationship Management
The main advantage of using social media on business is that it makes the company
not only friendlier but also closer with its customers. Now more and more corporations
spread news to audiences throughout variety of social media channels such as fan page
(Facebook, Twitter), business page (LinkedIn), etc... Naturally, the more frequency the
company makes impacts on its customers, the more loyalty it can build. For example, a book
publisher that introduces its schedule release daily as well as posts pictures of books through
Facebook can keep contacting with its present clientele and get new viewer when those links
are shared.
Market Research and Product Marketing
Nowadays, a large number of businesses use social media as a credible means to find
out the culture, views, and lifestyles that affect their consumer behavior. In addition, social
media is really a good mean for companies to have the information of their potential
customers. From there, they are able to build appropriate marketing and advertising
strategies. It is especially important when promoting global products since social media
allows people from different geographical areas to express their view.
Moreover, by participating in social media, the company can display its products and
services to an extremely large market. Many companies choose social media program to

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

launch their new product beside website advertisements and press releases. The following
table shows which social media tools were used by 500 selected companies between 2009
and 2011 (eMarketer.com, 2012, as cited in Svatosov, 2013, p.8).

Cost Control Initiatives

Svatosov (2013, p.8), in reporting eMarketer.coms study, showed that according to a
survey by Wildfire Interactive with 700 world markers, one of the benefits of social media is
cost reduction (41%). It is due that the company can offer its products to millions of
consumers through low-cost social networks with high efficiency instead of higher cost
television advertisements.

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

Negative Effects of Social Media on Society

Privacy concerns
These days, sharing private information on personal social media sites is more and
more easy. It becomes one of something else happened. Posting irrelevant statuses, pictures,
video clips or some false information themselves or someone else on social networking sites
without responsibility take on are more often. At that time, their issues may not have any
effect but it still exists. In fact that, people who did show too much personal detail often put
footprint back, which become some evidences for the following judgments or comparisons.
In addition, it is not only who uses social media know about their issues but also someone
outside.
Isolation problems
There are two ways to isolate people: First, when they use social networking sites
frequently, it becomes more and more important to them like their real life. With somebody
who rarely connect or communicate with other, social networking sites become a strong steel
wall protect them from the outside. This wrong thinking makes somebody prevent themselves
with others which is the reason led to autism, obesityin society.

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

Second, information on social media sites spreads rapidly which is easy become larger
and affect many people. They do not prevent or stop it immediately without leaking
something out. In some cases, leakage information on social media is a mean for them to do
marketing or promoting themselves. Nevertheless, some of them become disaster which
personal information, pictures or videos were posted unintentionally. Then, they will be
judged or commented by somebody they do not know before. As a result, if they cannot
exceed, their life will be isolated.
Addictions
Social media can make users addict. Addicting anything is not good because there are
many things to do in a person life. Many studies have shown that the extensive use of social
media can actually cause addiction to the users. Throughout their day, they feel to post
something on their pages or check others posts as it has become an important part of our life.
(Ali, 2012, para. 1)
Affecting children. When being addicted to social media, children will not have time
enough to study and play. It makes them tired and they will not grow about knowledge and
constitution. Children may also contact to bad photos, videos or status. It makes them have
wrong vision about life. They may become violent, timid, and weak. Their communicating
skills are poor because they do not learn much about real life, just in virtual one.
Affecting adolescent. Ninety
three percent of college students have a Facebook account (Wilks, 2011, p. 2). Social media
becomes more and more popular to adolescent life. Young people use online social
networking to maintain relationships and build communities. It makes them lack face-to-face
social skills. Moreover, adolescent is possibly the most essential time for social development
in a persons life. Addicting social media with virtual life make people lose ability of

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

communication. friendships formed online are more often shallow, casual, and short-lived.
(Wilks, 2011, p. 8)
Affecting family. In family, addicting social media is very dangerous. It can lead a
happy family to break because virtual relationships and secret information is shared quickly.
When time for social media is too much, time to take care of family, do housework, play with
the kids, and share emotion with partner will be shortened.
National security and Government.
Although social media has opportunity to benefit for national security and
government, it also has the potential to be a threat to national security and government.
Terrorist organizations use social media to rumoring the unreal information about
government, uploading violence videos or images to parading their power. Moreover, terrorist
organizations or hackers attack to entertainment websites to steal individual information and
credit card. Entertainment websites is attacked with high proportion at 15% (Trustwave,
2011).

It is very difficult to government preventing these violence actions from terrorist

organizations and hackers because national security experts cannot control the large number
of users that use social media.

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

Besides that, some people post their attitudes about political in blog or social
websites.
Social media use has been linked to the spread of political protests throughout the
globe, but, unlike during demonstrations from previous eras, todays communication
tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, give us real-time accounts of protests
documented by the participants themselves, (NYU Web Communications, 2013, para.
2)
There are no problems if their attitudes are constructive and contribute to the development of
social. However, it is very dangerous if their attitudes are offensive and reactionary to
government because it will be impact on the thinking of readers. These violence actions
influence to national security, economic, political, social, and faith of people to government.
Negative Effects of Social Media on Business
Burden of the Marketing change
Social media is very diverse with rich information channels. To understand it is a
process to explore and learn. Therefore, the disadvantage of social networking on Business
that is the time needed to research and put social networking in the business plan so that the
most effective. Why study the use of social networking for business purposes has spent a lot
of time? According to a new study by IDG (Research Services) shows that over 95% of
Internet users use at least one social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn,
etc.). Of those surveyed by IDG, 53% said the effective way of marketing to the user is to
provide information and answer their questions on the media (Dohnert, 2012). Recommends
users to share the following information:
- Product Details
- Product Reviews
- Customer feedback on products

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SOCIETY AND BUSINESS

- Dealing with customer service issues

Of Hiscox study showed that 35% of small enterprises often use social network to market
products / services (Hiscox, 2012).
In summary, companies need to have a marketing plan in the social media environment a
complete it as part of a business plan. Capture characteristics laws in this environment to
provide ideas and direction on the right, and to do this, businesses have to spend a lot of time,
cost and effort to research, learn about social networking and its application in the business.
Increased Customer Power
In the previous time, there is not social media, bad company experiences might stay
within customer's friends. These days, negative experiences and business failures which
could previously be kept within the internal company or the individuals friends circle can no
longer be kept that way. The nature of social web sites is the well social, so all things get
shared. Only one small mistake can spread into public relations quickly. A satisfied
customer will tell 2-3 people and a dissatisfied customer will tell 20 (Veil, Petrun, &
Roberts, 2012). Therefore, this has become more difficult for businesses to control its bad
publicity. In contrast, the negative publicity spreads faster than good publicity. While
companies make a mistake offline, a few customers will know, companies make a mistake in
front of hundreds or thousands of customers, most of them will know. For example, Vedan
company want to increase profit so that the company dont process waste and discharged
harmful waste into the environment to reduce cost (Hoang, 2009) .This affects human health
and makes customers dissatisfied. Therefore, customers through the social media spread the
information quickly .As a result of the company's products have been completely boycotted.
Tracking Negative or Misleading Statements
Social media is a huge conversation everyone is invited to join in and talk very things
they like. Using social media, people can deliver messages towards a business that other

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10

consumers can see or find any websites and often they cannot be ignored. It's difficult for
businesses to track statements about their brand that are negative or even defamatory.
Companies have the added burden of tracking statements and responding when necessary
(Lovering, 2011, para.3). The important factor here is how quickly a business will respond.
All organizations will receive bad reviews but if they do not respond or react to them then
they can be seen to supply poor service and bad goods. Therefore, it could be difficult for
them to recover. Now, with 24 hour news coverage and the speed of social media any big
story can spread over the world in a matter of seconds. This means that companies have to
respond quickly with a highly concentrated and analyzed everything before letting bad
comments get out of control. However, the response can be of limited effect if the negative
statement has already spread into the social media rounds. For example, rumors of General
Director of Asia commercial Bank escaped. This information was immediately spread quickly
through the media. This caused a psychological confusion and panic station in customer who
deal with the bank. Therefore, large crowd gathered to withdraw at the banks branches
simultaneously. However, the bank responds to accurate information to customers quickly so
that the withdraw of customers decreased. If the bank had not reacted to customers about the
rumors, the bank could have been bankrupted.
Accidental Release of Confidential Information
The employees use email or social networking careless leads to a large amount of the
company's confidential information leakage. The spread rate of social networking makes
community quickly. However, many companies are not interested in this. The survey by the
UK's e-mail SurfControl conducted has proved this. As a result that SurfControl published
more than 90% of the respondents confirmed that they use social networking sites to send and
receive confidential information. Nearly 40 employees had not received any information not
intended for them. 15% of those surveyed admitted sending sensitive information by mistake,

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11

of which 17% cannot recover the data (BBC, 2004). This dangerous premise that the use of
social networking to send the email about confidential information is confused can cause
unpredictable consequences.
In summary, when the social media accidentally leaked out also leads to loss of
morale work of employees, reducing reputation, prestige and competition with rival
companies. Although the company had changed previously classified information, but it still
does not change the view of the public with the company. This is a cause loss for the
company.
Conclusion
People are easy to communicate and promote thoroughly social media. Individuals
could connect, inform and share information commonly with others, whilst organizations
could promote their products or services to the customers extensively. After all of the
benefits, the problems are still existing insides such as: addition, privacy concerns,
information confusing, illegal activities... The social media seem to be standing at its
developing period, so it has a great potential future but people still have to deal with it.

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References
Ali, S. N. (2012). Social media - a good thing or a bad thing. Retrieved from
http://socialmediatoday.com/syed-noman-ali/608781/social-media-good-thing-or-badthing
BBC. (2004). Company secrets leak via e-mail. Retrieved from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3809025.stm
Dohnert, J. (2012). Idg study finds 95% of consumers use social media. Retrieved from
http://m.clickz.com/clickz/news/2229193/idg-study-finds-95-of-consumers-usesocial-media
Lovering, C. (2011). Negative Effects of Social Media on Business. Retrieved from
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-effects-social-media-business-25682.html
Hiscox. (2012). Social media ranks low for small business. Retrieved from
http://www.hiscoxusa.com/small-business-insurance/blog/social-media-ranks-low-forsmall-business-infographic/
Hoang, T. (2009). Pollution report ordered to push vedan to compensate. Retrieved from
http://www.monre.gov.vn/v35/default.aspx?
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010, February). Users of the world, unite! The challenges
and opportunities of Social Media. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681309001232
NYU Web Communications. (2013). Nyu project to examine social medias impact on
political attitudes and behavior. Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/about/newspublications/news/2013/02/19/nyu-project-to-examine-social-medias-impact-onpolitical-attitudes-and-behavior.html
Svatosov, V. (2012). Social media such as the phenomenon of modern business. Journal of
Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(4), 1-23.

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Trustwave. (2011). Web hacking incident database 2010 semi annual report - 2. Retrieved
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Veil, S. R., Petrun, E. L., & Roberts, H. A. (2012). Issue management gone awry: When not
to respond to an online reputation threat. Corporate Reputation Review, 15(4), 319332.
Wilks, M. (2011). Online social networkings effect on adolescent social development.
Retrieved from www.eckerd.edu/academics/ford/files/11/Mary_Wilks.pdf