Social Impact

Social Impact | Compare & Contrast

There are now 7 billion people in the world and over 2 billion of those people are connected to the internet. What’s even more shocking is that more than 5 billion have a mobile phone. With that many people connected to the web, social networking becomes a huge part of those peoples lives. YouTube is one of the most visited social media channels in the world.

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These statistics about YouTube are mind boggling.

  • 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
  • Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day
  • Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
  • Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
  • More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years
  • 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
  • YouTube is localized in 39 countries and across 54 languages
  • In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views
  • In 2011 there were almost 140 views for every person on Earth

With these astounding statistics, it is safe to say that YouTube has changed the way in which information, ideas and news are spread. YouTube videos are constantly being shared on other social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter making it easy for videos to become viral. However, it does not rely on those other networks for success which in turn makes it even more successful on it’s own.

Anyone over the age of 13 can post videos on the social networking channel. These videos can be anything the person desires. It makes for entertainment or for informational purposes. YouTube has been used in the US presidential election. It has been used to expose new music artists such as Justin Bieber. People such as Jenna Marbles have become famous from posting funny videos making fun of celebrities, sharing life experiences from her point of view or just random silly topics. Inspirational and motivational speeches for topics such as bullying or eating disorders can be uploaded for the world to see. Whatever the case, YouTube has become part of the everyday life of many people.

As with any social networking channel, there comes some negative aspects to YouTube. Because anyone can post videos of anything on the site, sometimes inappropriate videos make it up. They could be degrading, offensive, inappropriate or rude. There is a system where videos get flagged and then removed by the site but this doesn’t stop them from being seen by some people before they get removed. Bullying can also occur as with other social networking. Celebrities sometimes are the main target of some videos. They quite often get made fun of or are targets of gossiping.

There are clearly pros and cons to YouTube but when you look at the statistics, YouTube seems to have done more good than harm in the world today. Others might disagree with this but when it’s used in the right way, YouTube has some tremendous positive effects.

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