Benefits and Legal Issues

Potential Benefits

            The biggest benefit of social media is that it gives everyone the ability to communicate quicker and more efficiently. The most popular forms of communication that keep everyone connected would be email, Facebook, and Twitter. The developers of these social media companies are making these devices more user friendly. People of all age groups will have the ability to use these social media devices.

            In K-12^th grade school and college, students are taught to do research using different types of social media, and without the Internet many students would have a hard time researching information for a topic. Students do not have to go to a library anymore to find a book for information. There are databases and other scholarly journals that can give them the necessary information. Library liaisons and librarians are now accessible through email and live chats allowing students to get their questions answered quicker and receive helpful hints.

There is a new branch of our educational system that is called distance learning or distance education. This allows for the students and teacher to meet outside in a traditional classroom setting, and complete their assignments online.  The only time they need to meet at school is when they have to take an exam. Positive benefits that can come from this are students can manage a job and school more conveniently without sacrificing time and money. It increases the amount of people who will go through school throughout their lifetime by getting students with different abilities and different life situations, and could help cheapen the educational system. Teachers now have to be concerned with computer programs that can teach the student any curriculum. There is a growing concern that eventually our educational system will no longer need teachers (Farzaneh, 2011, p. 92). “teaching through radio and television training problems, shall be conducted by electronic machines and teacher, other students do not need to maintain all the knowledge but this information will be stored in electronic brains and will be publicly available” (Farzaneh, 2011, p. 92).

Social networks influence how a business would relate to its customers, and they do this by paying attention to what is going on with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These three main sources allow people with the same interest to form a group together and share information about a product, alert each other of discount and saving opportunities, and discuss their overall experience at a particular store. The company is able to keep in contact with its customers through these sites and allow them to give any special attention to the customer’s happy to ensure ultimate satisfaction. This new relationship between company and customer will not only help create a stronger customer relationship but it will influence other customer to go to that particular company. A negative effect that can come from this is if people are unhappy with their experience with a company and they post it on their Facebook or Twitter, then it can could persuade many people to stop going to that particular company (Grewal, D. & Levy, Michael, 2009, p. 348).

YouTube has been help for many companies to have videos for how to do improvement jobs around the house, Facebook and Twitter benefits companies by allowing customers to ‘like’ a company and build strong customer and company relationship (Grewal, D. & Levy, Michael, 2009, p. 348). They are also keeping track of what customers are looking at when they are on these sites, so they can cater the website and promotions to what the customers are looking for.

            Writing is the main form of communication in school, at your job and in many of our personal lives. In the professional world, having good writing skills will land a position of higher pay, higher quality of work and will display a higher level of professionalism to other co-workers. When a person puts any piece of writing on the web, it doesn’t matter what form of social media devices they use. They are able to gain the audience of the attention quicker and receive feedback or opinion equally as fast.  When articles of writing are printed on paper; the writer is normally in this one-sided conversation, but with social media tools it has become a two-way street of flowing information (Magnifico, 2010).

Legal and ethical issues

            Ethical and legal issues are now a topic for discussion because social media and technology are fairly new topics and there are not many laws addressing key issues. People need to be more aware of pieces of writing that they posted online because if there is any type of misinterpretation that ruins a person’s life, it more than likely could end up in court. The Internet keeps co-workers connected even when they are not at the particular job location. When an employee can prove that the harassment as “server or pervasive” it can be put under as hostile work environment claim. “The US Supreme court recognized that employers are liable under the Title VII of the 1964 Civil rights acts for harassment that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the employee’s work environment (Gelms, 2012).”

            A teacher was fired over calling her student a “germ bag” and “snobby” on her Facebook page. Another teacher had to fight to save her job after a picture of her and a stripper was posted on her Facebook page (Miller, 2011, p. 645)”. Social media sites are becoming so much more popular it’s harder for teachers, adults and people leadership positions from keeping their private lives private. The issue is a matter of public concern in education if it is “speech by public school employee about a policy or practice which can be substantially and detrimentally affected the welfare of the children attending the school (Miller, 2011, p. 645).”