The Benefits and Challenges of Social Media - Essay Example

al affiliation The growth of technology within the world is rapidly growing and is embraced by the majority ranging from the young to the old. The group that has highly given rise to this comprises the youths. This has its benefits and challenges as discussed below. Social networking sites include Facebook, Tagged.com, Xanga.com, Live Journal, MySpace, Friendster.com, Liked In among others have cropped on the Internet for the past few years. Social networking services can facilitate learning and skill development outside formal learning environments and especially for the youths below 25 in Australia through support brought about by peer to peer learning of skills and knowledge, diverse cultural expression, collaboration, skill development within the working area (Ito et al, 2006; Jenkin, 2007, cited by Palfrey, 2008, p7 cited by Collin, Rahilly, Richardson and Third, 2011). Social networking services foster a strong sense of community and belonging which has the potential to promote resilience, that helps young people to adapt to change and also stressful events (Collin, Rahilly, Richardson and Third, 2011, p7). Media technology encourages honesty and openness issues gauging from concerns, vulnerabilities and feelings that adolescents may feel uncomfortable discussing. Psychologists found out that hyper-personal internet talk stimulates friendships helping youths to solve their stress resulting in happier individuals. Boys, who are reluctant when discussing their feelings, demonstrate tendency to feel more satisfied with this effect (Farrer 2009). University of Minnesota conducted a study last year using social media which revealed improved communication and technology abilities, increased creativity and exposed students to new views. This activity has taught students on editing content, designing and also encouraged the production and sharing of poetry, art, photographs, video content etc. This improves on students resulting to better performance in exams (Farrer 2009). These sites create a central repository of personal information. As American adults are concentrating on how the government and other organizations are collecting data regarding its citizens as teenagers freely give up their personal and private information in their social media. School officials, government agencies, marketers and online predators can collect data about youths through online teenage diaries. We can conclude these by saying adults are more concerned about the invasion of privacy while youths are freely giving up personal information. This occurs mainly because youths are unaware of the public nature of the Internet (Barnes 2006). Whereas adults argue that some certain information like that may lead to hacking of one’s account. However, formal communication is not vanishing. As social networking is displacing other forms of online communication to some degree such as email, chartrooms among others incorporates others like blogging, music downloading, and instant messaging and remediates yet more notably, face to face and phone communications (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Jenkins, 2006 cited in Livingstone 2008, p395). To sum up on the benefits, Social Networking Services constitute new spaces for civic engagement and political participation including information sharing and bringing new networks for action. SNS are used for discussion, organization and mobilization as part of emerging political discourse in young people’s everyday life. (Kann 2007 cited by Collin, Rahilly, Richardson and Third, 2011, p19) The challenges that come along with social media include; first and foremost is from the church where head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales warns parents and guardians on the impending dangers of social networking media. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, said the sites drew brain washed teenagers. They went further to say that the internet treated friendships as commodities and argued that collapse of such friendships led to many adolescents committing suicide. His concern was that of young people losing the ability to form stable relationships in the real world, and he believed social media sites and texting were dehumanizing community life and killing the simple art of communication (Farrer 2009). The other challenge is that of online communication lacks the usual social cues such as sounding voice, body language, facial expressions etc that are mostly used to gauge the emotional reactions during the speech. That is why you find adolescents more open online because there’s absence of social cues enabling cruelty and some certain degree of rudeness. Social networking also raises privacy issues enabling stalking with ease as too much information is posted online. Mass media are gradually replacing face to face communication as a socializing force. More so, social sites have become popular for youth culture to explore themselves, their relationships and share cultural artifacts. The other challenge is that of online risks which Research has indicated that are not so different in nature and in comparison to the risks minors have long faced (Palfrey, 2008, p7 cited by Collin, Rahilly, Richardson and Third, 2011, p11). Social media sites create a new form of social behavior that deter distinctions between online and real transaction (Barnes 2006). Other challenges that undermine teenagers are those of control over their disclosures. First is that their notion of friends is subtle unlike that of the social networking sites which is typically binary, affording a simple classification of contacts. Being required to decide whether personal information should be disclosed to friends or to anyone fails to enclose the varieties of privacy that teenagers would wish to retain. Despite efforts by global networking, most people’s contacts are local with stronger bonds centred on pre existing study or work contexts (Haythornthwaite, 2001) and especially among teenagers (Gross, 2004); although niche networks are mostly territorially spread, interest in strangers (Boneva et al., 2006; Mesch and Talmud, 2007). The other challenge is creating identity, and social relations online that is time intensive and on occasion risky but also it is difficult to manage as teenagers may disclose personal information with up to several hundred people known only casually. Lastly, rapid growth of Internet use among young people have been credited to the rising awareness of its potential both positive and negative consequences on health and the development of children and adolescents. Lately, public concern began focusing on events of youth being sexually solicited and harassed on social media. Politicians and lawmakers campaigned on ways to restrict youth access to social media as a means of preventing online sexual exploitation of youth Internet users. (Ybarra and Michell 2008). References Barnes S., 2006, ‘A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States’, (viewed 12 December 2011) http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1394/1312 Collin, P, Rahilly, K, Richardson, I & Third, A 2011, “The Benefits of Social Networking Services: A literature review. Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing, Melbourne (viewed 22 November 2012) www.interactivemediarelease.com/download.php?...The_Benefits_of... K.Farrer G, 2009 ‘The Net is not the enemy’, The Age, August 10, 2009(viewed 12 December 2011) http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-net-is-not-the-enemy-20090809-ee6h.html Livingstone S., 2008, ‘Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self expression’ London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, New Media Society 2008 10:393. 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L. & Michell K. J 2008, ‘How Risky are Social Networking Sites? A comparison of places online where youth secual solicitation and Harassment occurs’, in Pediatrics 2008; 121; e350 (viewed 12 December 2011) http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/121/2/e350.full.html Read More