Networking sites are now a great source of communication, and serve the purpose of bringing long lost friends and families together. There are now many such sites around, that have laid down a platform for people of different parts of the world to come together. Also, these sites are treated as a stage to set up small businesses or even promote brands to gain some potential clients. However, the trend of being a part of these websites is more visible among teenagers and youth. These youngsters are at all times engrossed in the world of networking, without really knowing its benefits as well as dangers. Just as this form of networking has advantages, it also has its own bad features.
Some Positives
There are so many ways in which social networking has changed our lives for the better. Let us have a look at the most important ones.
- The role and future of social networking sites is to maintain simple and easy interaction among people. Friends who have lost touch can again connect with each other and always stay in touch. Also, with the various privacy settings, one can customize their profiles and categorize their friends and family accordingly, and make groups to make chatting easy. These sites always help people to stay connected most of the time, and makes sharing and talking easy.
- Other than only connecting with friends, many people can even meet and talk to other people who come from different countries, and get to know their culture and way of living. It is good platform for getting to know different people.
- Also, it provides us with cheaper communication. Through these websites, promoting your business idea is simple, as one can find potential clients by just sitting at home.
- Sharing pictures and videos is also possible through these sites. They give the opportunity to create your albums and videos, and post them in your profile.
- With the facility of sharing pictures and also chatting, the distance between people has reduced too.
Some Negatives
Though these sites bring a lot of benefits to people all around, the basic purpose of them is being abused too. Let us take a look at the various disadvantages.
- These sites require people to create their own profile on the site. These profiles are created out of revealing one’s personal details, which could be misused by other unknown people.
- The profile demands the certain interests and contact details that could cause a problem for youngsters.
- There are certain sites that provide privacy settings, by which one can hide all their personal information to strangers, and keep it visible to only known friends. However, many are not aware of these privacy settings and do not use them correctly.
- Also, some youngsters are willing to abuse someone’s space or privacy, and even create a fake profile to cause them problems. In this case, the person must immediately block such a profile, which will stop such kind of disturbances to their privacy.
- Online scams, stalking, identity theft, etc., are other huge and stressful problems that are caused under these sites.
- There is also a possibility of your account being hacked. This could be a huge problem as the hacker might tend to forward obscene pictures or send messages through your account to your social network. To avoid this, one must keep a check on the privacy settings, and the password must be renewed from time to time.
- Last but not the least, millions of people around the world are addicted to these networking mediums, and for no constructive purposes, which results in a lot of waste of productive time that could be used for something better.
People of all ages can be a part of the social network. However, maintaining strict privacy and not intruding into anyone’s space is essential to avoid any sort of bad practices. These sites are brought up for the purpose of bringing people of similar interests together, and to even promote an idea of business to reach out to people all around the world. When the authenticity of such sites is maintained, then one can realize the actual purpose and potential of these websites.