Positive And Negative Impacts Of Social Networking Services

Positive Impacts of Social Networking Services

Social Networking has been around long enough to consider the positives and negatives that it provides to society. Use recent events to discuss cases from the last 2 years.
 

Phenomenon of social Networking has been emerging since around last 10 years. Daily hundreds or thousands of people start making use of social networking.  So, it is a growing network which is being used by millions of people today. People use social networking in their leisure time as well as sometimes at work. Social networking has become a primary reason for which people have become Internet users. Even those people who were not aware of web or internet, they are also using social networking now. 

Facebook has been ranked one of the most visited website in the world which has more than 500 million subscribed users to the date. Social networking is generally popular among the youngsters or adults who make use of social networking for chatting, instant messaging, photo sharing, photo editing, educational purposes, sharing queries etc.  It has been recommended that age group of 16-29 are seen to be online using internet daily 90% rather than any other age group. With the use of Social Networking Service, users are able to communicate with each other in various forms. They use social networks for updating their profiles, commenting on the photos, posting messages or wishes, sending private messages. Creating and sharing various content blogs in the form of articles, videos, photos, audios are also facilitated by Social Networking Services. There are various positive as well as negative impacts of Social Networking Services which are described as follows: 

There are many reasons why Social Network is being used widely and greatly. Some of the positive impacts of Social Networking Services are described as follows: 

• Business: Social networking helps the (Mwila, 2015) businesses to grow in various forms. Earlier, there used to be various traditional marketing techniques such as radio, TV commercials and print advertisements which are hardly used nowadays because Social Media has introduced various methods through which a lot of customers are targeted for free of cost. Only energy and time is required. Marketing cost can be lowered or reduced to a great extent with the help of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google or many other social media sites. Real Life example of using Social Media in Business is that there is photographer named as “Scott Jarvie” who takes world class wedding and nature photographs with unique methods. He promoted his business sharing his photography on Facebook and Google+. This way, many companies are promoting their businesses with the help of social networking websites. 

• Digital Marketing: The social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are (Mwila, 2015) gaining popularity as social network is considered as the mostly used communication choice for writers, bloggers and content creators.  Real Case for Digital Marketing is that Uber has focused on mobile-savvy professionals who never mind playing extra effort to travel in comfort and style which helped in making booking in Uber extremely quick and easy. Uber is now a success story cited by many studies. 

• Content Writing: Social network provides a great opportunity to writers or bloggers as they can connect with their tech savvy clients for sharing the expertise and the articles. Audience then further is responsible for sharing the articles, blogs or expertise in their social network which is used to enhance the network and also increases the followers. Real Case for Content Writing is that there is a cake shop in New Jersey named as “Pink Cake Shop” which has set up a WordPress website and blog and posts regularly about the delicious cakes and cupcakes with the pictures to attract the customers. It worked successfully as traffic grew and so orders. 

• No Interaction Barrier: Earlier, if someone had to interact with other person, they used to go to meet that specific person or have to send telegram or a letter to that person but now Social networking services has removed such barriers of communication or interaction by making the communication easier. Now, a person sitting in another country can see what the other is doing with the help of video chats, a person sitting far away may know where the other person is with the help of check ins. So, Social Networking is helping people to connect with each other without any barriers. Real Life example of this is that there are various platforms such as Skype, Facebook Video Call, Face time, and much more which helps in removing interaction barriers and helps to connect with each other. 

• Educational Forums: Many times, (VURAL, 2015) when a student has some query regarding some problems, either he/she has to ask some teacher or his/her class fellow. But with the use of social network, a student does not need to wait to ask them for their queries. Social network provides educational forums in which students can put their queries and all the students registered in the forum may answer to the query by commenting and posting something related to query. So, it helps students to learn new things and to remove their doubts. Real Life example of Educational Forums is websites such as M4maths.com where a number of technical and aptitude problems are discussed by the students and one of the famous website stackoverflow which is used by every developer or programmers to discuss the problems related to errors or solutions to programs. 

• Uniting People: Social network services help to unite people on large scale to achieve some specific objective. For e.g., nowadays, people unite with each other to achieve some target by signing petitions. As many people sign petition, it is beneficial that many people want to achieve the target. 

• Raising Awareness: Social Network also helps to raise awareness about some new technologies, latest gadgets. Just not technology, it also helps to raise awareness about some diseases or disorders and provides solutions so that people suffering from them could do something to cure the disease. Real Case for this is that during the fall of 2014, Mercedes Benz organized its first ad-campaign with the help of Facebook and Instagram for promoting their first compact SUV, the GLA. Using Instagram, Automaker posted the photos using hash tag #thingsorganizedneatly for showing neatly organized items in the GLA’s cargo area. The company also did collaboration with fans and photographers for creating new insta theme #GLAPacked. In Facebook ads, Mercedes showed the designs of cars and linked it with the GLA specific web page. A case study was also published by Instagram based on the campaign.   

• Use of hash tags: The recent trend of using hash tags is used to grow businesses and to aware the people about something new. It is very simple use because a person just uses hash tag before the name of something which is to grow. For e.g. selfies are growing trend these days. So, nowadays when a person posts his or her selfie on the social network, they use hash tag of #selfie.

There is a school named as Burley Middle School which makes use of social networking sites such as twitter and Instagram. Principal of the school said that when he opened the school, there was a twitter account for informational purposes, and few teachers had also twitter accounts. Then he opened Instagram account for going paperless in a school. Then every student and every faculty member started and opened their social network accounts for the information and academic purposes. 

There is a software company named as “SEOMoz”, a software company which is a search engine optimization and social monitoring service provider. They make use of gaming mechanics for spurring participation from their writers and site members. They make use of posts or comments or likes to enhance their business.  

A survey has been done in which it is said that social networking is good if people share positive thoughts so that people who think of suiciding or killing themselves must be inspired from such thoughts. There are many persons or blogs which are sharing these kinds of positive thoughts on the networking sites such as Facebook or Instagram to inspire people and those blogs have now number of followers. 

There is always a possibility that if something has a positive side, then it will surely have some negative side too. Same is with the Social networking service. So, some of the negative impacts of Social Networking Services are described below:

Negative Impacts of Social Networking Services

Addiction: 

It has been surveyed that not just the youngsters, even kids who have age around 8-15 years have accounts on social networking sites like Facebook or Instagram. They are so addicted that they even forget to take food sometime and keep their eyes focused on the social networking sites. They do not even listen to their parents and keep themselves busy on the site. Spending countless hours on social network may distract their concentration from studies and some particular tasks that they have to do. Eve youngsters have become so addicted that they keep on checking their profiles within a minute or so. Because of the addiction, motivational level of people has been lowered, sleeping habit has been affected, and health has been affected. Those who use to rely mainly on internet, they rarely have any practical knowledge about something.

Real Case of Addiction is that there was a 14-year old girl named Jenna Betti who was killed by a train when she tried to retrieve her phone which was dropped by her on the tracks. She was hit by a freight train in Martinez, CA in March 2014. Her mother told that she had been sitting with her boyfriend on the platform but when she saw train approaching, they ran off. But she found that her phone had dropped on the tracks, she ran back again just for the mobile phone and got sucked by the vacuum of the train. 

Impact on Kids:

Social Networking affects kids so greatly. Sometimes, the photos which are shared on social network are of violence and related to sex which affects the behavior of teenagers or kids. Kids usually do not have knowledge about this kind of stuff, so they start getting involved in all this stuff which leads them to get involved in crime related activities. So, social network then puts a negative effect on overall society.

Sharing of Data:

Nowadays, with the use of Social Networking, people involve themselves in sharing most of the data which imposes threat that their confidential or sensitive data may be stolen by the third party or attackers. Downloading videos and copying text has become so much easy that anyone can copy or download it and may use it for some wrong purpose. Even attackers or criminals download the profile pictures of the users and use it for many wrong purposes. So, a user must be aware while sharing or posting some data.

Lead to Isolation:

Extreme usage of social (Social Media Today, 2012) networking decreases the level of human interaction. Due to the social network, people are hardly interested in meeting with each other as they keep themselves busy on social networks. They use to make virtual friends whom they have not even met in their life and lesser involved with real friends. So, social networking is making people isolated and alone.

Affected Productivity:

Social media is used in businesses to communicate with the clients. But sometimes, it becomes distraction for the employees who show interest in what their friends or colleagues are posting on social media which distracts their concentration on their tasks. It has been surveyed that Facebook has affected 1.5% of the office productivity. Some companies have adopted technologies that block the social media in the work places but they also remain ineffective as new technologies have been developed that allow access to the blocked sites.

Cyberbullying:

Cyberbullying is the use of information technology to harm other people in a deliberate manner. Cyberbullying is to threaten people for posting rumors. One of the real cases of Cyberbullying was that there was an 18-year-old girl named Jessica Logan sent her nude picture to her boyfriend but it was reported by Cincinnati Enquirer that the photo was sent to hundreds of people after the couple broke up. The cyberbullying continued through Facebook, MySpace and text messages.   

One of the negative impacts of social networking is that it is now altering the appetite of people. According to Women’s health, “food porn” photos are used to activate the center of brain reward and used to compel viewers to overeat. It has been suggested in the study that by looking at the food images after a meal leads to trigger the hunger.

Sometimes, due to addiction of social networking, people spend so much money on the use of social networks. For e.g. people are becoming so addicted such that they spend lot of money on their internet recharges. They cannot even stay without internet. Their addiction gets increased to a level that they can recharge their mobile phones even in the mid of night.  

Conclusion 

This reports discusses about the various positive and negative effects of social networking such as increase growth of business, removing communication an interaction barrier, digital marketing, raising awareness, uniting people, providing educational forums etc. The negative impacts of social networking are not only on technology but it is affecting the heath and lives of people. It has been surveyed that number of people suicide due to isolation feeling, or due to cyberbullying. Pictures that people share on social networks are being misused for pornography purposes. So, the report analyses that there are both positive and negative impacts of the social networking. It depends on the user who uses it. 

With the help of various training workshops on the best use of social networking and the good communication between parents and kids, cyberbullying and suicide can be reduced to a great level.  

References

VURAL, Ö. (2015). Positive and negative aspects of using social networks in higher education: A focus group study. 1st ed.  

Mwila, A. (2015). Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Society.

Social Media Today. (2012). Social Media - A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?. 

Abdulahi, A., Samadi, B. and Gharleghi, B. (2014).

Social Computing: Study on the Use and Impact of Online Social Networking. (2008). 

Bbc.co.uk. (2013). The positives and negatives of using social networking sites - BBC School Report.