Functionalist Perspective On Social Media

Introduction Social media, the internet revolution that has impacted the world and everything in it. Social media has been rapidly growing since its creation, and has grown to touch billions of people worldwide. Resulting from this recent growth is a lack of knowledge of the general effects it can have on society. Sociologists review issues like this through four main perspectives: functionalist, conflict, feminist, and interactionist. Functionalists think that everything in society has a function, good or bad, and all the functions are necessary for order. Conflict views firmly believe that society is controlled by the power and coercion of the most powerful people in it, the proletariat. Also maintaining that conflict and inequality are …show more content…
An interactionist could scrutinize social media's affect on the government as destructive to our political interaction and our national security. Since the explosion of social media use political figures have begun using it against other opponents, ?In recent days, social media has even doubled as a virtual debate stage, with candidates sparring in a manner inconceivable just a few election cycles ago,? (NB ). This article also goes on to show the candidates using photo editing software to take cheap shots at each other. Candidates are using social media to slander each other instead of talk about real issues. In turn, this leaves the public uninformed about the candidates themselves; it just shows which one can photo shop pictures the best. ISIS has become a household name in the United States, and that's because of one thing, social media. The terrorist organization has used social media to supply their group with a massive growth spurt. ISIS had gained the amount of publicity that past terrorists could only dream about in only a couple of years. They have used this social media power to not only spread their message, but also to recruit members all around the globe. Conflict wise, social media is just a tool used to maintain the power of the modern day bourgeoisie, while keeping the proletariat population satisfied. Various ?movements? or ?protests? pass through social media constantly. They seem to have taken the place of actual demonstrations nowadays. Somebody could make a post about the one percent harming this country, and when it's seen you click like and move on. This has absolutely no affect on, in this example, the one percent, all it does is create the illusion of helping. This is how the bourgeoisie want it. The general population get a false sense of satisfaction from liking a movement on social media; without actually making a difference that could even touch the