With social media booming in this generation, many people have taken notes of the flawed parts of it and created a bad reputation for social media and its users. Just like anything else, social media has negatives but it also encompasses many positive attributes that people tend to overlook.

1. Connection to friends and family everywhere

Yes, this one is obvious but people overlook it all the time. How cool is that when a friend or family member goes on vacation, they can post pictures for you to see while they are still there enjoying their time? Or if you have some family out of state and it's not super easy to call them due to time differences and work schedules, you can check up on them and see if they have made any recent updates so you can still be in the loop! Some people may say this takes away from human connection but I think it can advance human connection by having topics to talk about and specific questions to ask when you come into contact with someone you haven't seen in a long time.

2. You choose what people see

For almost every social media platform, there is a "private" option that allows you to choose who follows you and sees what you post. This is great for those of us who only want to share things with family and close friends! You also get to choose exactly what you post and many people say it's "false advertising" to only show positive and happy things about your life but why not share happy moments in your life?

3. Friendships

This one may seem a little weird but bare with me. Before I started at Grand Canyon University, I found a Facebook group for my future graduating class and I joined it to see if anyone had advice or personal experiences at GCU and I ended up making some great friends that I hadn't met until we started class and were all on campus. It seems weird to make friends with people you haven't met yet but social media gives us the opportunity to branch out and talk to new people (while being safe of course!!!!) and yes, there are some creeps out there but there is a block button!

4. News travels fast

Sometimes when something happens in your community, you may not know about it due to not watching the news that day or not checking the newspaper but with social media, you are able to check on the news and the cool thing is that you can see people's varying opinions on certain situations that you wouldn't have otherwise.

5. Small/ Online Businesses

Small businesses can get great revenue by posting things on social media and getting traffic on their websites. Also, there are some cool companies like Odyssey that are online based and rely on social media to grow and connect with other people. How cool is that?

With social media, there are a lot of things that can potentially go wrong and there are certain situations where it has put people in some scary situations but it all comes down to how you use it and making sure you take the time to realize that there are positives to social media and it is helpful in many cases!