Impact of social media in New Zealand

Question: Discuss about the Impact of Social Media in New Zealand. Answer: Introduction During the period of technological advancement, the impact of social media upon the society and its members cannot be denied. It helps people to come closer to its community despite of the physical distance. It also leaves positive impacts on education, business activities along with leaving negative impacts like cyber crime, cyber bullying etc. The impact of social media leaves both its positive and negative impact especially upon children. Moreover, it has impact upon different business organizations along with developing diverse career opportunities. This report includes both the positive and negative impact of social media on the society of New Zealand along with providing a background of its culture. Some recommendations are also suggested in order to improve the social welfare system of New Zealand. Culture of New Zealand The culture of New Zealand is basically very friendly and the old residents of this country like the Kiwis and Maoris basically believe in sharing. In this open and friendly atmosphere, food sharing seems to be an important gesture to develop friendship (Amedie, 2015). They like to indulge in the community lunch and dinner party. From the viewpoint of Basevi, Reid and Godbold (2014), they are very much helpful towards the tourists regarding the understanding of language, food etc. However, they generally do not reveal their personal information much in front of the outsiders. On the other hand, in the business organizations mainly stress importance upon the punctual and corporate dressing senses for both men and women (Cameron, Barrett Stewardson, 2016). Despite the cultural and language diversity, English is considered as the standard official language in New Zealand. There is no discriminating activity among the employees by the employers; even there is some legislation for protecting the employees from any discriminating activities (Davies et al., 2015). Trust seems to be an important factor at the work places in New Zealand because once it breaks mistakenly; it is regarded as broken forever. Positive impact of social media on the society of New Zealand As the general attitude of the people of New Zealand is free mixing with the people of the community and friends, the usage of social media has become a popular one in this country. With the help of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the people of New Zealand increasingly involving in social gathering, making new friends, are getting closer to old and distanced relatives and friends etc (Ezema, Ezeah Ishiwu, 2015). Social media has left a positive impact upon the communication system of this country. Figure 1: Different social medias and the time spend there by people in New Zealand (Source: Abdulahi, Samadi Gharleghi, 2014) As per this figure, the most popular social media sites in New Zealand are Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Tumbir etc. People spent maximum of their time at Facebook that enables them to come closure to their loved ones (Napoli, 2014). It also leaves positive impact upon the educational factor of this country. Different kinds of blogs prove to be beneficial for the students from which they are supposed to learn many things. In the schools, colleges and universities of New Zealand allow the assistance of social media in the education procedure in the classrooms (Ross, Fountaine Comrie, 2015). Facebook and Pinterest have learning collaboration with the educational institutes. More over social media paves the way for the students to invent new ideas and improve works. People in New Zealand aim to stress the importance of social medias like Facebook, Twitter etc as one of the main source of latest news feed (Shabir et al., 2014). Due to the involvement of readers viewpoints, people prefer to go through the social media accounts rather than going through newspaper sites. It also leaves impact upon politics by influencing people about the merits and demerits of any political party in this country (Stanfield Beddoe, 2013). From the promotional strategies and the social welfare activities of the political parties, the common people can get an overview and use the viewpoints at the time of casting their votes. The rightful and deserved candidates ensure the betterment and development of the society. Figure 2: Impact of social media on politics in New Zealand (Source: Al-Badi, 2014) Moreover, from the engagement of common people in the political post indicates towards the popularity of political parties. The recruitment procedure in these parties can be done though online voting. Some government policies of New Zealand have been circulated through social media accounts (Stojkov, Noy Sa?lam, 2016). By utilizing the popular social media sites, political parties often choose to communicate with people along with clarifying their different policies. By uploading YouTube videos, these parties try to leave positive impact upon people and influence their opinion about them. Social media also helps the business organizations of New Zealand as it provides the opportunity to build strong social network. With the help of these social media accounts, the organizations aim to communicate with their network in a regular basis (Stronge et al., 2015). It also helps to be competitive along with helping in meeting the corporate social responsibilities. By evaluating the feedbacks of consumers on social media, the organizations aim to develop their goals. Moreover, these sites also play an important role insofar as the marketing platform is concerned as people of New Zealand tend to collect information about products through social media rather than collecting them from the stores. For this purpose Facebook, Twitter seems to be most popular among the people of New Zealand. In addition, they also use these sites as a strong medium to approach people for recruitment purpose and updating new information about their organizations. Negative impact of social media on the society of New Zealand Despite the good impacts upon educational system, lifestyle, politics, business organizations etc, the social media sites also leave negative impact on the society of New Zealand. In the lifestyle of the people of New Zealand, the increasing involvement with social media causes detachment from their families and dear ones. People tend to spend more time on surfing social networking sites rather than spending quality time with their family and friends which help to reduce the stress level (Thompson et al., 2014). Moreover, the popularity of social networking sites makes people spend less time in sleeping which results in various health issues like Insomnia, heart blockage, high blood pressure, memory loss etc. Children in New Zealand spend most of their leisure time in surfing the social networking sites and do not indulge in extracurricular activities or playing games (Vinerean et al., 2013). As a result, it affects their study along with their health with the increasing rate of hear t diseases affected and obese children. In a survey, it is revealed that the New Zealanders spend around 64.25% less time in deep thinking since the massive popularity of social networking sites that indicates towards the unhealthy social activities. There are some instances in New Zealand where the mother of a child keeps herself busy in social site and the child hurts itself. It also proves to be harmful to the political parties which face some scandal previously. With the high promotional strategies of the social networking sites, the scandals get easily circulated among population which leaves negative impact at the time of voting. It also leaves negative impact upon the educational system because students often utilizes the social networking sites for making friends, indulging in fun activities, searching restricted links rather than gathering educational information (Zeitel-Bank Tat, 2014). It also affects their concentration on study and often causes memory loss. It is often observed that the children of New Zealand have become addicted to the massive popularity of social networking sites. Children also get psychologically affected by the sights of sex and violence, shared in the social networking sites. Being unaware of its negative aspects, people often shares their personal information of social media which cause online harassment or cyber bullying. In some adverse cases in New Zealand, it is evidenced that the teenage girls and boys become an easy victim of such cyber crimes which gives rise to juvenile crime incidents as well (Stanfield Beddoe, 2013). It also decreases the privacy in the lives of the people. People share their minute wise updates in social media which suggests the growing tendency of showoff. Moreover, despite the option of security lock of such social media accounts, the shared personal information can be hacked by an expert, that has become a growing threat to people (Stojkov, Noy Sa?lam, 2016). New Zealand has become one of the chief places for cyber crimes in the world. In addition, criminals tend to target innocent people in such social media through which they circulate their meaningful messages to their groups. People often posts gender abusive and other dirty opinion which seems to hurt people as well as community. Such posts are regarded as the negative aspects of social welfare. It also leaves negative impact on the business organizations by decreasing their sales and productivity because the employees tend to spend more time in such social media networks within their duty hours. For this reason, some of the business organizations of New Zealand have blocked social networking sites within their office premises to reject the reason of distraction of their employees. (Vinerean et al., 2013) Recommendations for improving social welfare in New Zealand Implementing health awareness campaign through social media Various types of health awareness posts help to increase the awareness among people. In order to improve the social welfare system in New Zealand, the bloggers and dietitians need to post more health and nutrition related posts so that they can make the people aware about the importance of healthy lifestyle and diet. It will also contribute in making the New Zealand people aware about the evil impact of Smoking and alcohol consumption. Providing more working opportunities through online The business organizations can post more recruitment advertisement on the social media sites can improve the employability situation in New Zealand. More working opportunity will enable the residents to make a better community in this country. New Zealand community can invest more in developing the social scenario in New Zealand. The increasing employability rate in New Zealand will cause improvement in the standard of life. Useful tweets on important social or medical events The event organizers of New Zealand can employ the medium of social media to circulate nay important news feed like any medical awareness campaign, educational campaign etc so that people can take active participations in these programs that contribute in improving the social welfare factors. Increasing awareness through innovative blogs on marketing strategies The business organizations of New Zealand can use these social media sites for promoting their products as well as services so that they can approach to a wide range of population. From the social media users arguments, the organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of their products in the current scenario of this country. They can also include the feedbacks of the customers in their products so that they can approach to more consumers in New Zealand. Making government newsfeeds easy accessible through social media for common people New Zealand government needs to share the newsfeeds in the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc so that they can be circulated to a huge number of people in this country. By updating their latest policies and programs in the social sites, the government can effectively contribute in developing an advanced society in New Zealand. With the help of this kind of awareness strategies, the government can include more people for the successful implementation of their social welfare programs. Conclusion In this way, the impact of social media on the society of New Zealand is described elaborately by stressing importance upon the cultural background of this country. It indicates to the effectiveness of social media within this culture. 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