Why Social Media Addictions Can Be Healthy (Or Why You Should Stop Shaming People Who Love It)

As any millennial born as a blinking light in a Google Universe, I use social media an unhealthy amount — but unhealthy is subjective. I leave notifications on my phone to a minimum. I appropriately use hashtags. I limit myself to one Instagram post per day. This behavior would categorize me with most of the general public, so you are probably confused by my choice to identify my behavior as unhealthy. There are few contrarians, those who still have no idea what a “handle” is or have yet to upgrade to a smart phone, who perceive social media users as self-absorbed, mindless followers who post meaninglessly on meaningless platforms and would call my desire to be constantly connected as “unhealthy.”

Though I recognize my compulsion to check my phone first thing in the morning and last thing at night is just that — a compulsion — I can also recognize how the evolution of the information age whipping out the idea of ‘TMI’ has benefited individuals and large organizations. Everyone can be tracked on social media. Your potential college roommate? I bet you looked through their Instagram to find out who they were based on how many selfies they post and whether or not they posted a “Pray for Paris” photo. A cute boy in your class? I know you stalked him, his sister, his best friend, and his cousin to find out if he was available and to see how ugly his ex was.

Nowadays, people have access to information in milliseconds which allows people to be connected with their favorite brands, old friends and mutual strangers in a network. There is so much potential for companies to harness this network to expand their brand (and when I say brand here, I am referring to how they represent themselves on social media, not a brand like Nike). Public relations practitioners would be foolish not to use social media.

According to a study the Pew Research Center did in 2015, 63 percent of Facebook and Twitter users said they get their news directly from social media. In a instance of crisis control, a scandal is more likely to be read about on social media and therefore responding to it through social media or making sure whatever information you release also is publicly available online is in theory much faster than had you waited to do a press release. Social media also allows for instant feedback to campaigns. It brings about a more personal, while still being one to many, relationship with clientele and your audience with the simple “comment” or “re-tweet” features across social media. I have yet to use social media professionally, but as the audience, I have witnessed companies utilizing social media to interact with their consumers directly and run strategic social media posts that are relevant to trends or spark conversation, which concurs with my assumption that it would be foolish for PR practitioners to ignore the benefits of using social media.

Extra readings where I found some of my facts and links to any pictures I used: 
http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-http://giphy.com/gifs/facebook-modern-family-cXlf2WeOJzjfqtwitter-and-facebook/