Are social networking sites good for our society?

Are social networking sites good for our society?

With the last few years, there has been a mammoth boom in the means of communication. One amongst the most valuable benefits of the social networking that has detonated in popularity amongst professionals, teenagers, and individuals who live away from their homes. From the very beginning, the social networking sites have appealed various sorts of users, and in majority of the cases, these individuals have incorporated these social networking sites into their personal daily routine (James, 2012). The popularity of social networking sites for example, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Skype and Flicker, has grown phenomenally in the last five years. However, are these means of social networking beneficial to our society? This is the question that we would be addressing to in our study.

According to Accardi (2012), social networking media have completely revolutionized the trends of people and societies all through the world. social networking media has proven to influence and provide the best means for the education systems, the way businesses establish and promote their products and services, the way people socialize with their remote as well as close relatives, the way people hunt for jobs and select careers for their future.

The positive role of social media as given Accardi (2012) is reinforced by McDonald (2004) who suggests that social networking media have influenced the society world over. Nine out of ten users in the United States visit a social website every month. Research statistics show that approximately 4.5 hours or 12% of all the time they spend on the internet is spent on social websites. This time distribution is more visible among youngsters than it is among the middle aged. This increase in trend is also among the elderly who are 55 and above (McDonald, 2004). Social media may be defined as a group of media that have the following characteristics: It encourages participation in that it erases the demarcation among media and its audience. It promotes openness in that sharing of views and information is much easier. It is different from broadcast in that broadcast presents one way views whereas the social media entails two-way communication. It facilitates the formation of communities. Moreover, it offers increased connectedness for businesses.

Education system with the ascent of social networking media has completely revolutionalized. Trends have taken a whole round turn; student teacher relationships, access to resources and lectures, means of acquiring lessons and explanations, and every other aspect of education system has changed a great deal; and this is no magic, rather the influence of the social networking media having versatile range of features and applications. The teacher student relationships have improved because of their open and frequent interaction on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. students quite readily approach their teachers on such networks for any assistance regarding academic courses, assignments and test results rather than following the conventional traditions and waiting to approach their teachers when they meet them in ...