10 Advantage and Disadvantages of Social Networking
The internet has completely changed the way that people in today’s world live their lives. You have access to people twenty four hours a day, every single day of the year, right at your fingertips. Social networks have also emerged as a result of the ever growing world wide web. These are websites that allow you to create a personal profile, post your opinions and beliefs, and interact with people, all online! While the majority of people love social networking and find quite a bit of joy and use out of it, there is a growing group that believes it is single handingly destroying society. In order to gain a better understanding of what effects social media and networking is having, let’s take a good look at the good and bad aspects.
Advantages of Social Networking
1. Creates and Promotes Social Connections
The main reasons and purpose of social networking is to be social. This is very successfully accomplished because of just how easy it is to talk to and communicate with people on social networking.
2. Sharing Information
Another great benefit of social networking is that you can share information to a large amount of people at once. You can keep your family and friends updated on what is going on in your life through videos, pictures, and textual updates.
3. An Effective Marketing Tool
Social media sites have an extensive reach, and content has the ability to spread like wildfire. This makes it a marketers dreams. You can use these sites to gain recognition for you name, brand, or product.
4. Differing Opinions
Since there are so many different people on social networking you can get a broad range of opinion on different matters. Whether you are needing advice or just looking to get different viewpoints on a subject, you can quickly and easily get in on social media.
5. Raising Awareness
There are many issues that people are not educated or even aware about. Social networking gives people the tools that they need to truly raise awareness. One great example of this is the awareness of ALS with the ‘ice bucket challenge’ that was a world wide phenomenon.
6. Brings People Together
There are many groups on social websites that bring people with common interests together. This can form great friendships with people that are involved in the same types of things. Love is another thing that is commonly found through social media, and has become one of the most common ways to meet new romantic partners.
Disadvantages of Social Networking
1. Cyber Bullying
Bullying has always been a problem among young people, but cyber bullying is a new, and progressively growing, problem. This is when the bullying happens over the internet, commonly through social networking sites. There is no way for these people to escape the bullying, and it can happen anonymously so no one is held accountable.
2. The Addiction Is Real
A new problem is beginning to emerge in today’s world, especially with younger people. This is the addiction to social networking. The attention that you can receive, interactions that you have, and many other things go into social media and internet addiction.
3. A Society Of Narcissists
The biggest thing that social media does is let you put yourself and your life on display. This has caused people to focus solely on how they re perceived on social media, which typically involves looks and lifestyle. People are obsessed with themselves and this is largely to due with social networking.
4. Destroys Social Lives
It is pretty ironic that social networking is negatively impacting people’s social lives, isn’t it? However, this is most certainly the case. Instead of having face to face interactions, people are hiding behind keyboards and cellphones. All social interactions are beginning to happen on the internet instead of organically in real life.
