Memes: we all know them. We all hate them. People all around the world view or even create memes every day. However, are they truly beneficial to society?

As people scroll through their social media platforms, there is no doubt that they will come across a meme. Memes can be very entertaining and make you laugh, but do you truly know what the meme is about?

For example, a social media user sees a meme and thinks it’s very entertaining. However, they’re not quite sure what it’s talking about. Most likely they will continue scrolling and find another to laugh at, but they won’t actually find out what the meme is about. Some memes are about events that happen in real life or events that affect the community around us. Nevertheless, the viewer will still scroll past with no research.

Researching these memes could be very beneficial to anyone because it brings them closer to the community. It allows them to understand what is happening around them. With a little bit of research, anyone can learn new things every day.

Memes can also distract people from the real world. This essentially means that when one views a meme about a problem in our society, they’ll laugh and move on with their life, not doing anything to help fix this problem. One can help promote awareness for this problem instead of laughing at a meme about the problem and doing nothing about it. Without these sort of memes, people could actually be focused on these real problems and take action.

In addition, memes can be offensive. Yes, people may enjoy seeing these memes, but are they truly necessary to have? If they are created by someone, that meme can be detrimental to them. As funny as this sounds, creating offensive memes can affect your future.

In 2017, Harvard rescinded admissions offers to at least 10 students of the class of 2021. These students created a private Facebook group and sent offensive memes through this chat. Once this was brought to the Harvard admissions office, they made the final decision to rescind their offer of admission to these students.

According to thecrimson.com, “After discovering the existence and contents of the chat, Harvard administrators revoked admissions offers to at least ten participants in mid-April, according to several members of the group.”

These students’ lives were tremendously affected by a simple meme group chat. If memes were truly beneficial to people, why would they have been rejected from college?

Also, offensive memes can really affect one’s well-being. They can offend someone and possibly make them feel bad about themselves. Memes should bring people up and make them laugh, not ridicule someone. Anyone should feel comfortable viewing memes and not having to worry if they will be offended by it.

Depending on the type of meme you see they might be funny, but remember to look further into it. This meme could hold information about your community or might be talking about a real world problem. Without doing these few things when viewing a meme, they are not beneficial to society.