Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Disadvantages of Social
Networking
Here are the advantages that can be more than enough for you to
want to join in.
Low Costs
Builds Credibility
Connections
You are friends with people who have other friends, and so on.
There is potential in such a common situation. By using a social
networking site, you can do what you can and get connected with
these people to form a web of connections that can give you
leverage if you play your cards right. As long as you give as well
as you recieve, then they will most likely stick with you. These
connections are definitely valuable in the long run.
Lack of Anonymity
You are putting out information about your name, location, age,
gender, and many other types of information that you may not
want to let others know. Most people would say be careful, but no
one can be certain at any given time. As long as people can know
who you exactly are, then some can find ways to do you in.
Time Consuming
The social networking websites are more like the virtual meeting
places where people can just chill and hang out with friends. They can
discuss on different topics, share information, and exchange files and
pictures. There are some people who use these sites as a platform to
meet long lost friend and batch mates, whereas there are others for
whom it becomes a bridge to meet their future love. You can either
reconnect with your friends and family members or search a dating
partner. Some people also use these websites to promote their blogs
and services. The professional people uses this as a medium to raise
their visibility, get noticed, tell about their company, service, and get
more clients.
Social networking of course helps in a lot of ways but the users have
to really careful to stay secure and safe. Security is one of the top
most concerns of social networking sites that you currently use. This is
mainly because the social networking sites allow you to display your
personal information such as name, location, and email address. There
are some people who always in search of a fake identity. If they get all
the information about you on internet, they may use your identity for
different type of illegal activities, which may cause you problems in
future. It is always advisable to don't provide your entire identity
information online.
You may get many requests for adding as friends or joining different
communities. Always try to know as much as possible before adding
anyone as friend or joining any community. Because they may use
fake identity or may involve in some illegal activities, which may spoil
your image.
5 Must-know Disadvantages of Social Media:
1. The wrong online brand strategy could put you at a viral social
disadvantage and may even damage your reputation, i.e,
when you make a mistake offline, a few will know but when you
make a mistake in front of hundreds or thousands of you online
audience, most of them will know!
2. Using social media for marketing and advertising could be more
time consumingthan companies expect.
3. In order to get social media’s full effect, you need to understand
how it works,when and how to use it and which channels
to focus on depending on your end goal of using social media.
4. Social media can have a negative influence on worker
productivity. Employees may waste valuable time using social
media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. They can also use
social media to attack the company’s reputation!
5. When social media is used excessively or in the wrong way, it
could have serious detrimental outcomes on both mental and
even physical health of individuals.
This paper aims to discuss the negative impacts that social networking
sites pose on today’s media savy generation. It is apart of my study
for the unit ‘Internet Communications and Social Networks’ and fits
into the social networking stream.
Identity Theft
Identity theft is a huge problem in today’s society and has come about
as a result of the rapid expansion and availability of internet
technology and the increase in personal data found on social
networking sites. In fact “A total of 806,000 Australians aged 15 years
and over were victims of at least one incident of personal fraud in or
identity theft in 2008” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008).Sites
such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter facilate identity theft in two
mains ways. The first being is that sites encourage you to ‘edit your
profile’ this includes adding your interests, full name, where you live,
who your top friends are, your email address and even personal details
like your phone number an relationship status. “Users share a variety
of information about themselves on their Facebook profiles, including
photos, contact information, and tastes in movies and books.”(Jones &
Soltren, 2005). This information disclosure causes a huge problem as
the more information you have on your profile the easier it is for
identity thieves to verify themselves as being you. The second main
issue is the privacy settings on these social networking sites also help
faccilate personal fraud. Whilst there are built in features that allow
users to change their privacy settings and not allow other users to
view such personal details, these settings are never default, so that
users are usually unaware how much information they are sharing not
only with their friends, but with the rest of the world “By default,
profiles on Friendster and Tribe.net are crawled by search engines,
making them visible to anyone, regardless of whether or not the
viewer has an account” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). A general lack of
awareness amongst users and the fact that digital identity can be
easily hacked makes social networking sites a hub for identity theft
which results in unwanted legal hassles, loss of money and years of
trying to re-establish a victim’s credit and good name (Acquisti &
Gross, 2006). This is why it is important for “users of social network
systems to be aware of the value of the data they are making available
online and of the ways that is can pote3nitally be used” (Donath &
Boyd 2004). Furthermore another privacy issue that social networking
sites face is that they encourage users to overshare very private
information that can easily be used against them. For example the
location based social networking site Foursquare encourages users to
‘check in’ at various locations to win points and earn badges and
discounts. However these ‘check ins’ are in real time and essentially
users notify others where they are, but more importantly when they
aren’t home. For strangers and thieves this is the perfect opportunity
to take advantage of such knowledge and rob someone’s house while
they are out. A web site called “Please rob me” has been set up to
raise awareness about over-sharing and highlights these kinds of
privacy issues that social networks create “Location based services
also raise myriads of privacy issues due to the ability to collect, store,
use and disclose the locations of users.” (Anuar & Gretzel, 2010). In
this respect social networks like these pose serious privacy concerns.
Cyber bullying
The way we communicate with our peers and with strangers over the
internet is changing. Another negative impact that social networks
have on our relationships is the fact that whilst they might strengthen
our weak ties we have with acquaintances and people we don’t see
often, they are in fact weakening our strong ties and also bring about
physical social isolation. The term ‘social networking’ misleads people
into believing they are being social, “Facebook isn’t considered a social
network but more a public phone book or search engine. Contact is
minimal and impersonal (Carr, 2010).The news feed feature on
facebook and twitter keeps us in the loop with everything that our
close friends and family are doing. Why would one call their friend to
ask them what they got up to on the weekend, when clearly all they
have to do is look at their news feed and find all the details along with
pictures entailing their lives. Traditionally we would regularly call each
other, or go out of the way to catch up. Nowadays the urge to contact
each other over the phone or even face to face isn’t as important
because we feel like we are still connected via social networks (
Thomas, 2007). This idea of constantly being connected is awful in the
way that personal interactions between friends are more superficial
than they were before Facebook and other social networking sites.
Users are also more likely to let more time pass between face to face
encounters because they still feel like they are in contact as they
constantly have tabs on all of their friends. A case study that was done
in America revealed that “ twenty-five percent of the respondents in
the 2004 survey appear to have no close ties, up from ten percent in
1984. Additionally a similar study amongst college student found that
“1 in 7 say that social networking sites increase feelings of isolation”
(Katonda News Network, 2010) As well as “Nearly 70% report reading
posts from someone close to them that seemed like a cry for
emotional help, and while most students would offer support in some
way, fewer than half would make a personal visit” (Katonda News
Network , 2010). It is clear that the rise of social networks has
increased social and emotional isolation and diluted the strength our
human relationships.
Workplace interference
As social networking sites become more popular by the day, the rise of
negative social effects within our society also greaten. We have and
will see further instances of cyber bullying; more cases of identity theft
and additional privacy breaches. We will also see our strong
relationships diluted to a more superficial and ‘convenient’ type of
relationship. We will continue to see a further decrease in productivity
within workplace and also more instances of company’s reputations
and names being brought into disrepute. Social networking sites have
had a huge negative impact on our mental and social health and will
continue to do so into the future. It is also now evident that social
networking sites facilitate all these problems, and without them they
would cease to exist. Therefore it is undeniably true that Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace, and the like do in fact cause more harm than good.
References:
Cute baby competition turns ugly. (2011, March 3). Retrieved from:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/8946214/cute-baby-
competition-turns-ugly/
While most articles are reporting on this news without passing much
comment there others which are sensationalising this information but
are social networks really to blame for this change in behaviour?
The description of ‘shortened attention spans and instant gratification’
has been used many times to describe the lives of people in the
western world with every thing from TV consumption to meals have
evolved that allows us to receive it when and where we want it.
This change in our behaviour is not a new realisation with everybody
from scientists, to the media as well as consumers aware of how time
poor our lives have become resulting in a change in our behaviours to
become more self centred with weakened connections between friends
and loved ones.
So while social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo might
be making this change more apparent they may actually be a way of
bring us back together as a community.
Despite this I still believe that especially young people need to have
developed social skills face to face in an offline environment for this to
be the case. People who have no other experience of ‘real life’ and live
solely through their online worlds will naturally be distanced from
reality.
Community networking has been looked at by far too many expert as a blessing. They
see each new friend or follower as a possible user. But too often they let their efforts
stop with that initial connection. A great number fail to realize just how detrimental
community networking can be to one's success when not used correctly. How can
something so unifying and so easy to use do more harm than good? If you are
wondering about that question, then you either haven't been using community media
long, or you haven't been using it correctly. Because to agree how to make it work for
you, you have to agree first how it can work against you.
First of all, community networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can make online
expert lazy. They can see their follower count or list of friends rise, every now and then
by a hundred or more per day, and they think that success is inevitable. Meanwhile,
they look at how sales and revenue are coming along, and they are shocked to discover
they are worse off than before. The reason for this is that they forget that community
networking affiliations are very basic, and that turning these individuals into buyers
requires one to develop a deeper affiliation.
Secondly, community networking sites create a lot of noise. There are hundreds of
millions of people across the world using these each day. A great number have 100 to
1,000 friends. With all that noise, it can be very difficult to looking one's message heard,
and as a result, you looking drowned out in the static. Instead of making community
networking a numbers game, it is better to surround yourself with a smaller group of
people, who are actually solid contacts. People, who will help you spread your
message, service, or merchandise to the world.
Thirdly, community networking takes away time from one's site or blog, the real online
sales tool. People looking so caught up playing community media games or checking on
what other people are doing that they forget to be productive with the site that truly
represents them. Instead of getting sucked in, it is better to work on content. Make it
compelling and give people a reason to looking off the community networking pages
and on to your own personal site. There is a lot less noise there than on a place that
has more than 500 million users. When people are at your site, they will actually hear
what you want them to hear.
The more that you agree about the pitfall of community networking and how it can
actually do more harm than good, the more effective you will be when you use it. Keep
that in mind the next time you looking excited about a new follower or friend.