Do the social media platform impact continuous or adult education?
Technological advances have changed the way people once used to celebrate life. In the present era, being social means that we are present both physically in society to collaborate with people and also, we are present on the internet celebrating socio-political and socio-economic affairs. Therefore, an assumption can be made that consuming time on the Internet can possibly affect social status positively or negatively. However, I argue in this study that spending more hours on the internet can help us live a strong virtual social life as compared to a life lived in a physical society, due to the scope and capacity of online society. This paper also identifies that being social in the digital world will have long-term positive effects on global developments because society on the internet is much greater and more powerful but the realistic physical social domain will lose its charming identity due to certain factors like being slower in the transformation process.
Introduction
It was a time when people did not have many communication facilities; therefore, keeping abreast of each other with the latest news and happenings, and informing or enquiring about those who were living far away from home took too much time i.e, letters were the primary delicate source of communication but the delivery of the letter took too much time to reach to its destination (Rogers, 1994). Consequently, a conclusion can be drawn that letters were of little benefit in emergency scenarios. Nevertheless, letters are still an integral part of the communication system but their delivery is now quicker than ever due to the extensive advancement that the transportation system has achieved. To this extent, the highest benefit that mankind received through the advancement in communication technologies is that these became not only helpful but also served as the base for a new type of society, which we name social media. It was almost impossible almost two decades ago that one could have friends throughout the world; fortunately, now almost everyone who is an internet user may have friends or connections to distant lands that might have ever remained unknown to him/her if the blessed internet had not been there. The invention of social media platforms allows people to get in touch not only with family members but also with people they may even not know really. Despite some scandals that social media sites are not safe, it is, however, true that social media sites have a high-standard encryption system that not only allows people to maintain and control their privacy but also provides a safer way to escape from any fraudulent activity. It can assume that these privacy tools and techniques serve as laws and regulations which control the social community. These social communities have the power to influence the political, socio-economical, and any other field with due power of “freedom of speech”. By “freedom of speech” I mean that people on social media platforms have the opportunity to comment on any policy of the government, they have discussion forums, and much more. For instance, some of the revolutions came into existence due to social media platforms like the one in Egypt, and the Tahrir Square revolution, which is largely considered a social media revolution. Similarly, social media sites also serve as marketing tools, news media, education centers, entertainment platforms, and much more. With a diverse range of tools and interpreted systems, social media acts like a virtual society that can be compared with real societies that exist in real life. The present approach mainly focuses on how these social media platforms and generally the internet retain their users for a longer span of time during the whole day. And, the question also here taken into consideration is that is there any significant effect of remaining present on the internet generally, and on social media platforms specifically. However, the study claims that using the Internet and remaining present for a longer time on the Internet has a positive effect on global community development.
Method
The current study has been formulated on the literature review technique through a comparison and contrast approach for finding out the impacts of longer presence on the internet concerning social life. An attempt would be made to both examine the old and current literature in an evaluative sense. It would be qualitative research that will also touch on the current trends and practices that people usually follow on the internet and in their daily life. The literature review will discover both the qualitative and quantitative research so that it would become easy to interpret the results and current practices. To aid the research, an interpretive stance is being taken on the foundations of facts and surveys, and also the statistics available concerning the study.
Literature Review
The question of the origin of society is complicated to answer. One of the reasons is this question is related to a wider area of subjects and philosophies. For instance, Ellwood, C. A. in his book talks about the diversified nature of this question by mentioning that this question is related to biology; whereas, the function of a psychological sociologist is just to talk about the first interaction between animals and humans beings or human to human interaction and the process of prolonging this interaction (1909). Whatever the answer is; it is evident that society has a long history of existence where human beings depended on each other to combat common and individual issues and challenges (Hossain & Ali, 2014). Ever since the concept of social media came into existence, the domain of sociology also gets expanded (Shank, 2020). Now, sociologists have to examine the nature, scope, and functions of society on two levels. Firstly, they need to investigate the realistic society which exists physically, i.e, where the constituents of society are family and groups that are based on blood relationships, similar language, religion, or culture. Secondly, the existence of virtual society is complex in its structure because of its diversified nature surpassing the domains of religion, culture, and so on (Runardotter et al., 2020). With the invention of social media and integrated applications and tools, the way of communication changed totally. The most accepted definitions of social media include the apps and platforms that have been designed with an aim to make social communication, news spreading, and opinion sharing, and likewise easy and appropriate (Leonardi et al., 2013). These applications or platforms allow their users to collaborate with each other through the medium of text, voice, image, and video messages. The plus in this subject is that people can reach out to millions even billions within no time. For instance, the platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Dribble, etc, and WhatsApp are wonderful platforms that form a fine society (Zimba & Gasparyan, 2021). Similarly, these platforms allow their users to hold conference calls either audio or video. Zoom is an example of this area (Zoom, 2022). It is quite interesting that users on these platforms have the access to create their profile by filling out a complete biography page that even includes interests and habits. There is always a risk of fake profiles but most of the time users have legit and fair profile-building habits. One can easily visit another person’s profile and know about that person without really getting in touch with that person (Kareem & Bhaya, 2018). Similarly, the users have the choice to control their biographical information in the form of privacy (Squicciarini et al., 2010). These features make this universe a wonderful society where people have control over many things at the same time. Comparably, real-life societies have their limitations. For instance, a realistic society is limited in its population and reach. A person has little choice but to get in touch with the people of interest while in virtual societies one can have thousands of like-minded people (Décieux et al., 2018). The other positive aspects of virtual societies also include their scope, i.e, it has the power to develop a global village where people can easily communicate their issues and interests within a matter of no time. Turning towards the virtual world as a sustainable kingdom for living a social life, several authors have talked about the issues and challenges that one may have to face on the internet. However, some researchers like (HAIR et al., 2012) and (Muwani et al., 2022) suggest that the virtual world is a wonderful opportunity to live a knowledgeable and entertaining life. For instance, while celebrating virtual life, one may have the opportunity to make a catharsis of his feelings. Social media platforms provide an opportunity to say what you want, share what you want to, and the response rate over social media platforms is amazing. There are groups where one can share his/her problem and get helpful advice (Nabi et al., 2013). Contrary to this, there are significant chances that one can be misinformed, trapped, harassed, or cheated over social media platforms; however, while having a larger population, one can easily interpret what others are saying and how they are responding to his/her issue. Similarly, most of the economics business has now shifted to the digital world. One can now sell and purchase things over the Internet. Unlike the real world, the digital world provides the opportunity to read and interpret reviews before buying any product over the internet. This feature increases social responsibility and collaboration. Reviews about products, services, and institutions help people to decide and make opinions and judgments fairly. To add to this, the digital world also helps to get abreast of the latest gossip and happenings in the world while real-life society is a bit slow and dull in this regard and often does not provide a significant chance to check for what is true and what is false due to limited opportunities and mediums of communications. Focusing on the information gap and expertise, real-world societies have a lesser number of experts in different fields while in the digital world, one can easily have access to a greater number of experts and entrepreneurs (Muduli & Trivedi, 2020). Mentoring and coaching in any subject area are easy and affordable in the digital world. Most of the time, getting help on any issue is quite easy and does not cost any financial prices. For instance, for any issue, a user may watch a solution video on YouTube. The business mechanism of the digital world is amazing. Additionally, In most developed countries, if we look at the educational system, there seems that concept of continuous education had no space and value. However, with the emerging trends in the digital world, people now look for continuous education as a process, and now skill learning and enhancement are dominating processes. The impacts of the digital world seem positively affecting cultures. Above all, cultural diversity can be understood best in the social domains of the digital world because there involves little effort in understanding different cultures and it is quite easy to adjust to different cultures in the digital society.
Discussion
The social and psychological areas of study provide comprehensive information and fact-based knowledge that digital society helps men to combat the challenges and issues of real-life quite easily and the affordability of solutions is not too much costly. For instance, outsourcing is a new relatively new concept covering the gaps for lack of skills and expertise, and opportunities (Twin, 2022). Similarly, when we talk about jobs or adopting a professional then we come across the interesting fact that online remote jobs and freelancing platforms contribute to a greater part of the global economy. The platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and PeoplePerHour are amazing platforms that provide outsourcing and job opportunities not only for youngsters but the old folks who can get benefit from these platforms. Similarly, Amazon, eBay, Daraz, and Alibaba are also wonderful e-commerce platforms that also constitute a significant part of the global economy (R, 2019). Therefore, the question of long-time presence on the internet gets answers directly from the fact that the digital world is now more mature, and wide in scope and sustainability. On the grounds of psychological investigations, the question of mental health concerning long-time presence on the internet seeks attention. However, the research in the domains of talking and making connections to strangers has revealed that personality development receives positive aid through interacting with strangers. The reason behind this positive development is quite interesting. The studies found that strangers can be more knowledgeable, experts, and sympathetic toward others. The learning process through such connections gets enhanced and sophisticated. Contrarily, the question of health is critical in this regard. For instance, long-time presence on the internet has complicated challenges, i.e, due to time differences people tend to wake up late in the night to make communications. Similarly, looking at digital device screens for longer hours can not only leave effects on eyesight but also the studies confirm that they may also have mood disturbances. However, these issues can be sorted out. There are certain facilities like screen protectors for vision protection, reminder gadgets for reminding about sleep, etc. The healthy effects weigh too high than the negative effects. Above all, the culture of digital presence is at its peak now and it has become a necessary part and parcel of human life to make an online presence. Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that we now need to make and develop strategies for sustainable living in the digital world instead of thinking to avoid the use of social media and the internet in general. Spending longer hours on the internet is the subject of a larger scope for the investigation. Specifically talking about children and students, we see that our educational system is shifting greatly toward e-Learning platforms. This is a blessing in the sense that e-Learning platforms provide more interactive tools and learning aids that help to make teaching and learning mechanisms significant and effective. The only issue is addiction. The question of internet addiction is critical. We may need to develop SGDs for monitoring the use of the internet for children and students. The gaming sphere of the internet and entertainment websites may cause negative effects if they are too often visited and used. However, in parallel positive effects dominate the negative effects of using the internet too frequently.
Conclusion
To summarize, social media and the use of the internet, in general, is a widely accepted and approved, and mandatory phenomenon. The use of social media helps in the continuous education process for adults; whereas, children can learn and develop a confident and learned personality. Despite the mental and physical health issues, the use of the internet significantly aids in personality, skills, and social behavior development. Above all, the digital world is a huge community where different cultures unite to form a single unity, namely the global community.
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