Our society is one that is always on the go. Between long work weeks, single parenting, adults going back to school, and normal household chores, anyone can find themselves without the time for a social life. With this vital role of life missing, a substitute has been created, social networking. Prior to emergence of social networking, people used to spend their spare times in amenable socialization, getting together in cafés and hotels where they could manage discussing their hardcore issues. The emergence of social media has totally altered the concept of socialization. At the present the physical segregation does not let a person in state of isolation, given the social media bridge the peers, relatives and co-workers into undying bonds. But what cost comes with this new source for a social life?
Not only it is used to talk to friends, but it is also used to discuss educational topics. The use of social networking helps improve technological skills of students, and exposes them to many diverse views about things. It also has helped with communication skills, and allows the learning of cultures from users all over the world. Also students use social networking to discuss homework topics with peers online, and to get help on assignments. It is reported that sixty percent of students on social networks have said that they talk about education, and 50 percent specifically talk about school work assignments. These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and 21st century skills including communication, creativity, collaboration, and leadership skills and technology proficiency.
These networks give a person the ability to quickly and easily share information about events that they are attending, quotes that inspire, irritating experiences with local companies, even personal pictures of normal life experiences that happen throughout their day. With the need to post every detail of our daily life, things are exposed not only to friends and family members, but to the entire cyber world as well. It is easy to forget who all is looking at these pages.
SNS is known as Social Network Service, is an online service platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. SNSs such as Facebook, Twitter works like this. Adolescents who become members of these SNSs communities, they will firstly get a personal profile which will show their personal information including the name, job, photo, relationship status, religion, hobbies and so on. Except displaying a network of friends, other users can then click on their profiles and traverse ever broadening social networks. The three features including profile, friend and traversing friend list show the most crucial characteristic of SNSs.
Facebook users generally start an account, with a desire to re-connect with past friends or to open a channel of communication for current friends and family members. Having a Facebook page can be a great way to connect with distant relatives or friends that are not seen often. However, most Facebook pages will fill up with people from the past, acquaintances, and even co-workers. The more people that are accepted to a page, the more time consuming it become. Social networking has become such an integral part of daily life that everybody finds himself incomplete without getting known about his current status.
Apart of being associated with lots of goods a bit of harm also inflicted by the use, abuse or misuse of social media. It brings a certain degree of negative impact on adolescents’ mental health and social development. This study that researches the negative impacts on adolescents’ interpersonal psychotherapy will significantly help colleges and universities’ moral educators to play the network edge, overcome the disadvantages and make use of the Internet to cultivate adolescents’ sound personalities and good psychological qualities. The social networking site, like facebook, may seem innocent enough but it can negatively impact free time, privacy, and even our careers.
A 2010 Case Western Reserve School of Medicine study showed hyper-networking (more than three hours on social networks per day) and hyper texting (more than 120 text messages per day) correlated with unhealthy behaviors in teens. Hyper-networking was also associated with depression, substance abuse, poor sleep patterns, suicide and poor academic performance.
In addition these sites reduce the amount of face to face socializing and replace it with online interaction which is believed to result in low quality relationships with other people. Teens over share information to the public that can hurt them in the future when trying to get a job, and deleting the information is not good enough. Cyber bullying occurs as well, which is bullying people online in a public way, but occurs at a small percentage.
It is also found that people frequently using online social networking are also prone to social isolation which can lead to depression and decreased social skills. A false sense of security leaves social networking site users vulnerable to security attacks such as hacking, leaking sensitive information, and sending viruses. Identity theft can occur when a cybercriminal uses the network to gather personal information posted about people.
The social media is continuously advancing, and changing to fix the negative problems. One example would be accessing social networking sites using cell phones so that people can access the site on the go rather than sit at home on a computer. Most users have stated that they have had only positive experiences with social networking, and very few people experience cyber bullying. There are still problems that need to be fixed, but it seems that the positive effects outweigh the negative effects. Social networking is a very valuable tool that can be used to meet new people, and allow people to remain in contact with friends. Even though it can waste time, social networking positively affects the world by allowing people to communicate, and remain in contact with friends in an easy and convenient way.