Social media has many pros and can be very useful to society, one of the most helpful things that social …show more content…
One of the most impactful cons that social media is facing today is the massive spread of false information. Social networking sites can be very effective at spreading information quickly and efficiently however there is no way to know whether or not the information that you have received is factual or some fake piece of propaganda that someone has posted to skew public opinion a certain way. An article published by the New York Times describes how only hours after the Las Vegas massacre (that took place on Sunday October,1 2017) hundreds of rumors had popped up all over social networking sites like Twitter, and Facebook(Carey,Benedict). Some of the rumours included things like the sheriff was covering up the incident, there was multiple shooters, the killer was from antifa, or he was a alt-right terrorist; furthermore, the fake accusations spread across social network sites as if it were a wildfire engulfing everything. The las Vegas massacre is only one example of how social media can be abused to further the ideals of another and be used to spread lies and propaganda. Another example of social media being used to spread propaganda is the 2016 United States presidential election, many suspect that during this election russian hackers used popular networking sites twitter, and Facebook to spread lies about our nominees to dissuade people from voting for them, and cause political strife in the hopes of cause our country to become even more divided. Another example of rumors spreading over the internet is the case of Devin Kelly who was responsible for a mass shooting of a church in Texas USA TODAY reports that only moments after the news of the shooting reached social media sites people were already spreading lies about him like how he was supposedly connected to the antifa movement(Jefferson,Graham). Our own subconscious