“I have a Facebook and Instagram and a Twitter and a Tumblr,” Aathira Menon (9) said, laughing midway through her sentence. “I don’t know if there are any others.”

Social media-savvy students like Aathira are common on the Upper School campus with explosive popularity of networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In the few decades of its existence, however, social media has had a variety of applications further than simply a communication tool.

According to a study done by Nielson Holdings in July of 2012, about 171.8 million people use social media in America alone, a staggering 56 percent of the total US population. Social media has several benefits, such as allowing friends separated by long distances to stay in touch.

“I use Facebook. It’s a good way for people to stay connected,” Kevin Moss (11) said. “For example, when I was in the fourth grade I lived in South America for a year, and that’s how I stay in touch with a lot of my friends down there. That’s one of the good things about Facebook, that it’s international. ”

To communicate with friends, Kevin prefers Facebook to email because it allows him to see pictures and read text more easily.

In addition to providing a way for friends to chat and post photos, social networks have helped raise awareness and fundraise for charities. In 2009, 97 percent of charities used a form of social media, according to a study by the University of Massachusetts. Charities such as the Salvation Army and the American Cancer Society have garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes” through Facebook and multitudes of followers on Twitter through the outreach of social media.

In a more dramatic example of the power of social media, bloggers and social media users tweeted and posted on Facebook to send updates during the Egyptian rebellion against Hosni Mubarak in 2011. This social media campaign prompted Egypt’s Internet blackout, during which Internet service providers throughout Egypt were shut down for five days.

The same outreach of social media that can help charities or spark protests can also be used in cyberbullying and blackmail.

In 2012, Amanda Todd, a high school student at Port Coquitlam, British Columbia committed suicide after repeated occurrences of bullying through Facebook. She was harassed by strangers over photos she posted on Facebook, and although she transferred schools multiple times, images of her continued to propagate online due to social media.

The Cyberbullying Research Center averaged eight individual studies and found that 23.9 percent of participants had been cyber-bullied at some point in their lives.

Some Upper School students, however, believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of social media.

“It’s really good at spreading awareness, so people can learn about important causes such as charities,” Divya Periyakoil (9) said. “It’s up to a person’s own discretion to know whether to use it for good things or bad things, but I think that in general people who are going to use it for good things shouldn’t be deprived of it because of people who do bad things.”

The scope of social media is a tool that has the power to create significant changes. Its effects can be good or ill depending on the user’s intentions.