Today, there are many types of social media available to us at the click of a button: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr - just to name a few. With the invention of smartphones, we can access them everywhere: at work, at school and even on the move! There are several sometimes rather controversial questions surrounding this topic, which I will try to answer. The key question I will ask is: how has this affected our modern lifestyle? What do we use social media for? First, it means that we are able to connect, or even reconnect with people we otherwise wouldn't see very often. It is accessible to people from all walks of life. Here are some examples of how different people use social media.• People who have lived abroad know that it is a good way to keep up to date with the daily activities of their family and friends.• Senior citizens can reconnect with someone from at school who they have lost touch with and otherwise wouldn't know where to contact them.• Teens can use it to see what their favorite celebrities are up to, stay in touch with their friends during holidays and show off their creativity.• Business people they can use it to promote their business and reach potential customers. What are the advantages of social media over personal websites, emails, letters and old-fashioned manual advertising? Nowadays people lead busy lives. Therefore, they like to be able to do things quickly and efficiently. For example, let's say you want to book tickets to a Coldplay concert, but you don't know when the next one is or where to book them. You can head over to their Twitter feed, where they posted: "So excited for our UK tour in March 2014 - to book tickets, go to www.example.com" This tweet wo......half of paper... ...ter, and you will be able to see what most people are talking about, whether they have negative or positive opinions. While the credibility of some sources can clearly be contested, news channels tweet or provide updates on significant happenings around the world. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they give people a voice. A voice that can influence both major and minor decisions around the world, a voice that can both help and harm other people, a voice that makes people feel like they can have a say, without face-to-face consequences. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is open to debate. To conclude, I think it's open to debate whether social media is a good thing, but there are always two sides to the coin. When there are benefits, there will always be negatives: it generally depends on the person who has the power how to use it.