Social Networking Sites:Beneficial To Society

Discuss About The Social Networking Sites:Beneficial To Society.

Essay on Social networking has been rapidly evolving in recent years and have come a long way in the last ten years. Especially since the year of 2006, the growth rates in these social networking sites have experienced a very sharp increase. Two of the most leading social networking sites have been Facebook and Twitter which have grown substantially by registering a vast user base over a very short span of time.  It is evident from the rate at which technological advancements are being made that in the coming years this user base for the social networking sites are going to grow even wider. Thus, as a result of being available to the masses, the social media networking sites are serving as the enabler for societies in ensuring that several benefits and advantages are reaching the people. Be it the developed countries, the developing ones as well as the under developed countries, social media networking sites have been able to penetrate people’s lives in most of these countries. In most cases these sites have ended up affecting people in positive ways. Today several countries are tapping into social media to reach out to the citizens and address issues like arranging emergency services for the affected people, accident victims and the needy. The personal interventions from the government for addressing the needs of issues of the citizens facing troubles are enabling the people and the government strike a chord and raise the trust factor to new levels that would not have been possible before.

However, there do exist exceptions, those people who have grown addicted to using these social media sites and the apps that come with it. Some of these people have even met accidents in trying to be part of a social trend while riding or driving on road. A recent example of such trends is the Kiki challenge. This means social networking is affecting the societies in negative ways also pretty similar to any other tool or empowering service. It not just depends on the mentality of people using the services, it also depends on the discipline and social ethics of the user. Some people are using the social media to irritate or bully others as also in instigating violence. Other people are affecting themselves by staying up all night only to browse through some petty discussions and comments while several people are getting addicted to the third party apps and games available on these social networking sites like Facebook. Hence it all depends on the type of usage of the service the users chooses for himself. Yet if weighed on a scale, the positives obtained from social networking by the societies in general far outweigh these above mentioned negatives.

To get into greater further details of these advantages of social networking sites on human societies, it is better that each and every aspect is discussed separately. The ten different benefits of social networking start with connectivity. The primary and the most important benefit to the society is the connectivity. Through social networking people from all places are now able to connect and communicate with anyone and everyone. Locations or religions barely play any factor. The importantly people can get in touch with anyone they wish, learn from them, share their thoughts and thus find likeminded people. Education is another benefit made available to the societies by social networking. Irrespective of the place they live, social networking can immensely benefit students and teachers alike. This is because it is much easier to get educated from other professionals and experts over the various social networking sites like twitter, YouTube as also from several Facebook groups and pages. Any people are able to follow other people to learn from them thereby improving his or her knowledge base on a particular subject. A key form of benefit obtainable from social networking is ‘Help’. Every now and then people may face issues with their systems, their life process, and wellbeing as also with their own field of study. These issues if shared with the respective communities over social media, the people will most certainly benefit from expert advices from the experienced ones present in the group. Among the other main benefits is the newer and newer information with which users can update themselves from social networking sites. These information are readily available to social media users through the twitter feeds, news feeds in Facebook as also the recommended videos from YouTube. Since the Television news channels have lost their credibility nowadays either by being too sensational in providing the news, constantly showing content on the topic and because of being particularly biased with the news. Thanks to social media correct factual information can be gained and validated, it only takes a bit of research. Other benefits of social networking can be promotion of products and businesses. Be it an offline business or online the promotional features of social networking sites can immensely help the user in significantly increasing the visibility of his business and make it easier to generate leads and increase their conversion rates. This is because the social media site offer advertising to improve brand awareness, monitor traffic to the business website as well as detailed analysis of visitors to the web pages and their activities leading up to the conversion or the lack of it. This helps businesses improve the UX and UI of the websites as also details associated with the product listings accordingly and thus ensure better sales in future. Offline businesses can improve from brand awareness advertisements where the social networking site attempts to show the product and business names to as many of the people possible are found to match the target audience as set by the user. Other benefits can be use of social networking for noble causes. These activities can include promoting of NGOs, social welfare activities, donations for the needy and people affected by natural disasters. Social networking sites are heavily being used across the world by all types of users, organizations and entities to generate funds for various causes. This has helped donation campaign as funds can be arranged very quickly and sufficiently. Another benefit to the society is awareness. Social media, by making information and knowledge more readily available to users helps immensely in increasing awareness among people towards sustaining a more humanitarian world, too fight the manmade perils of global warming, climate change by compelling people to take countermeasures like planting trees, saving water. Social media educates people innovating ways to enhance lives of people through ways of living, ensuring wellbeing and social harmony so that they can leave a better world for the younger generation of people. Another key benefit of social media for societies is that these sites help the governments in fighting crime. These can involve helping governments catch spies from the intelligence agencies of other countries trying gather confidential military as well as technological information from the country. These malicious actors can also instigate insurgencies and thus the government and the country benefits immensely from the powers of social media. The social networking sites also help businesses in improving reputation. By serving as a unified platform that helps the business connect with their consumers and clients and resolve embarrassing incidents through appropriate marketing channels like online reputation management. Thus social media ensures that the rapport between the business and the consumers is well maintained and the business does not have be headlined for the wrong reasons. The last but most important benefit that can be obtained from social networking sites in how these sites help users in building of communities. The world is comprised of different belief systems, religious philosophies. The social networking sites help users create specific communities for their own cultures, religions and philosophies. From these communities even other people can learn a great deal about different cultures and the different ways of living. Here people across the globe can connect with other people of the same culture for example people who go abroad for studies can connect with people of their country through such communities. These communities thus also help the students find similar people in the region or the very university so that they can form groups and eliminate the barriers of communication and getting to build the levels of trust required to complete the various project and research specific tasks assigned to them for accomplishing their academic career.

Thus from the benefits of social networking sites explained above it becomes clear how effective social media can be in improving lives of people in a society. Not only that, the benefits also speak volumes of service to the nation that social media sites provide by mentioning how they help the government tackle the threats of espionage, help maintain adequate levels of trust between the people and the government thus ensuring the sovereignty of the country is not challenged. Social media is also found grow awareness among people about global perils like climate change and global warming that can affect all forms of life.