Social Media | A Boon Or a Curse For Society

Do new media like the internet or mobile phones destroy social contact? Or the tools like SMS text messaging or Facebook (a social internet platform) change the life of young people for the better?

New media has brought many advantages and disadvantages in the sociality of young people. Is SMS texting, Facebook and Internet harmful, or are they good? In this essay I will be discussing those points.

On the one hand we have the social media. Internet, mobile phones, test messaging, Facebook, Twitter and so many more. 90% of the teenagers use social media. With social media, adolescents are able to communicate with their schoolmates, their family, or even their friends from other countries. Internet and Facebook, have opened "portals» that people can use to talk with people from other countries. Through this communication, young people can get new ideas, new opportunities and get much information about a country. Moreover, they can contact their friends about things from news and gossips, to school lessons. This shows that social media has brought many innovations and has very good effects on teenagers' lives.

On the other hand Social Media brought some shortcomings along with its advantages. One crucial disadvantage is the fact that young people have become isolated. To explain it better, even if teenagers communicate with other people, they do this via their mobile phone or electronic computer. That way, they lose all contact with the outside world and become addicted to the Internet. Another drawback is the fact that adolescents may talk to someone they don’t know. Internet is full of dangers and one of them, are the people that lure within it. People with malevolent intentions. More than 5000 young people fall victims in the hands of those people. Last, but not least is that teenagers communicate with their friends using the online applications and websites, but that way they don’t practice their face-to-face communication skills, which will continue and eventually this will lead to a completely unsocial generation.

In a nutshell, I believe that Social Media are very useful and have changed our life to the better, but it has many dangers, thus we should be more aware of how we use it. In order to use it correctly though, I believe that we should have a limit.

In recent years, new communication technologies such as mobile phones and social internet platforms have become an integral part of our everyday life. But how have these new media affected our social behavior? On the one hand, there are those who believe that social media have enabled young people to cultivate richer social lives than before. There are a lot of social networks such as Facebook or Twitter that allow friends to stay in touch more easily. When they do not have time to hang out they have at least the opportunity to interact with each other even for a few minutes. Moreover, there is no doubt that cell phones and internet have helped to maintain contact with friends and family members that live abroad. On the other hand, some people believe that these social media destroy social contact. It is true that young people today prefer chatting, texting or talking on the mobile phone with their friends to going out. In this way, they tend to lose face to face contact which plays a significant role in developing an integral personality. Furthermore, many young people live an illusion believing that they have hundreds of friends on Facebook. Some of these so called friends might be fake personalities that just want to deceive them. All in all, social media have proved to be helpful in developing our social behavior and expanding our relationships. Though we should not let them supersede face to face contact.

Social networking sites

Social networking refers to the use of online social networks such as Facebook, twitter, Hi5 and Google+ to communicate with other people. A social network can include blogs and ways to share text and ideas, groups,private messaging, a chat facility and file- or photo-sharing functions. Social Networking sites have always opened the gates of debates among users and non users. Are Social Networking sites Boon or Bane?

Need of social networking sites:

Social networking is fundamentally shifting the way we interact, communicate, organize, form opinions, and even shop. Its blurring boundaries, increasing transparency and creating fluidity in everything we do. Growing rapidly, companies, large and small, can no longer ignore or try to block social networking in their environment. The reality is you need to go where your target audiences are – and people are more likely to participate in a social media forum than any other venue. Customers, partners, and employees, alike expect to engage with you via social media – it’s a way for you to stay connected, gather feedback, recruit, and collaborate. As a result, you need to support social media in your environment to enable the innovation, increased productivity, and accelerated growth that will drive your business.

Some examples of popular social networking sites:

Facebook: Facebook is a social networking site that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. In May 2007 Facebook launched the Facebook Platform which provides a framework for developers to create applications.

MySpace: MySpace is a social networking site offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs and groups, commonly used for sharing photos, music and videos

Twitter: Twitter is an example of a micro-blogging service. Twitter can be used in a variety of ways including sharing brief information with users and providing support for one’s peers.

G+ OR Google+ : Here while describing about social networking sites we can not miss BIG G Google+ , Although It has not been able to create proper niche in social sites uptill now but business class is pushing it just to help its pages to get upper ranking in google search , Although G+ , according to me is better in terms of features than all other networking sites but then even shifting from facebook , twitter to G+ for normal consumer will take lot of time and we will have to see how long it takes.

 Demerits of social networking sites

• Privacy: Nowadays, the social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are open for anyone who wants to participate. On social networking sites users express  very  powerful  concerns  about  privacy  of  their  personal  information,  but do not care about  safeguarding it. Although a lot of the information individuals’ supply on  social-networking sites is elective, users are progressively more comfortable with displaying a great deal of personal information online. Therefore, one of the main concerns for users who register in these sites is privacy. So, the privacy is one of the obstacles that have faced the use of social networking in education.

• Real friendship: Through social networking, person has a lot of friend but the quality and integrity of these friendships is not always true. On the other hand, data on these social-networking sites for a person is not always 100% honest and reliable, and they do not verify personal details (age, location, etc.) of their members. While sites provide an opportunity for individuals to present a positive and accurate self-image, there is an equal potential to abuse this openness. So, having many friends through social networking sites is likely to be more harmful than good.

• Time consumption: The amount of time spent by individuals with each other online has risen to greater extent. This has effect on health of individuals, because spending a lot of time browsing these social networks can affect the way the genes operate within the human body, and weakens the immune and hormone levels. In addition, it is also has an impact on mental health. Moreover, the use of social networking in the education can cause lack of motivation towards learning and can be boring sitting in front of computer for a long time.

More Points

• Through social networking one can increase own language and communication skill. Being a member of a social network, he become a part of a world community.

• Social networking sites would be very much useful for  studies if used efficiently.

• Social networking sites have already conquered the minds of not only young people but also adult people all over the world. It can offer a large scale of interactivity and connectivity without boundaries of distance.  It can also evolve as a social media which shares and deals the things from bedroom to parliament.  It can become the best media for information transferring media.

CONCLUSION: Social network has made the life of people more easy and interesting, its negative impact has created insecurity among them. Everything has some good effects and some bad effects but it fully depends on individual how to utilize good effect and how to convert bad effects into good effects. At last I would like to conclude “SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULD IMPROVE YOUR LIFE, NOT BECOME YOUR LIFE!”.

It is just social networking sites which offers people to express views FREE of any boundaries and has made every one Journalist.

My conclusion is that Whole social networks are good and it should be used with intelligence…

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