The Negative Effects of Social Media - Case Study Example

The Negative Effects of Social Media Ak Chase and Accessories, http akchase.com 02/social-media-negatively-affects-teens/ Submitted Dr Oregon State University Corvallis Oregon, 97331 Submitted by: Computer Science Major Oregon State University May 20th, 2015 Table of Contents Executive Summary.............................................................................................................1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................2 Scope........................................................................................................................2 Methodology............................................................................................................2 Findings............................................................................................................................2-7 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................7-8 Recommendations................................................................................................................9 References .......................................................................................................................... 9 Appendices ....................................................................................................................... 10 Executive Summary The basic aim of this report is to analyze existing opinions, arguments, and news on the privacy on the social media. In addition to that, this will also put light on the negative impact of the social media. Few decades back, these social websites got very much popularity. People share their private life activities on their social networking sites and accounts without knowing that these are their personal photographs and anyone can use them in a negative way. Usually people do not care about the privacy of their lives and if anything may happen to them then there is no use of crying over spilt milk. In other words, we can say that most of the people amongst us have destroyed their private lives just because of these social networking sites. Sometimes these networking sites are even causing tensions and anxiety in the people. Therefore the biggest and the most harmful effects of this social media is the privacy of people’s lives and the anxiety caused by it. The findings of different articles are briefly summarized. Social networking sites are an engine that contains people information and their daily life posted on profiles. People use social networking sites to post some sensitive information that most of the time considered private information, which could led to another circumstances if it was used by criminals. The users range from teenager to adult but there are a few users that are under 13 years of age. Different institutes assess student’s social website accounts to evaluate them. Likewise, many employers are also concerned about the social activities of their employees. According to research studies, people should be aware about the negative and harmful effects of their social networking activities. However, many of the social networking websites allow some privacy concerns but still the personal information of the account holder is accessible to some people. That means privacy is not guaranteed. Introduction Blattere, in his article, ‘Modern Privacy Shifting Boundaries’ says that since technology has been improving very quickly ever since the integration of the internet to computer and the creation of social media, people now like to involve themselves with everything on the web. When the internet was created in the early 19th century, people got drawn into the web, that as such a lot websites via the help of search engines have been made to help provide information which are both relevant and irrelevant to anyone at any given time. Electronic mail and etc. are not excluded from such medium of obtaining information via the internet. According to McKinney’s research article, ‘Criminals using Facebook to get into homes’, during the late 19th century, social networking sites became popular and a lot of people have membership to websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Keek, and so many of them out there. People in social networking sites post a lot of their private information, as well as that of others and also share their daily lives on their personal profiles on these social media sites without knowing that that could lead to harmful circumstances in the long run. Scope The purpose of this report is to show the negative effects of social media. This report will help people to analyze that how they are ruining their private lives by themselves. The sharing of their private life photographs on the public social websites is not at all good and secured way. Therefore, people should change their social networking habits. The internet privacy is nothing and thus people are getting trapped in the name of internet security or privacy. Methodology This report contains variety of opinions from professional in their respective fields. We have done primary research by questioning different people about their social habits. In addition to that we witnessed many people’s social statuses on their social accounts. Moreover, we also researched many of the peer reviewed journals including key words of bad/harmful effects of social media and the privacy concerns of social media. Findings Griffith in his journal titled “Duty of confidence and the use of social networking sites” explained how some nurses and doctors who were working at a hospital in Britain shared confidential patients information on Facebook while playing the game ‘planking,’ and lost their jobs in the process. They ended up creating a bad reputation on the hospital, but they in-turn lost their jobs as well which is the price they paid for using the social media for their own benefits. Aside from this above mentioned instance, there are a whole lot of cases involving the use of social networking sites inappropriately, and these have led to the destruction of lots of people’s lives. Trepte and Reinecke (2011) has stated that “Today, in media culture, there is a tendency toward a dissolution of the boundary between the private and the public; toward intensified penetration of the public into the realm of privacy, and of privacy into the public sphere.” (p. 23). They continued by saying that people share everything they do at their daily life by giving everyone else’s an idea of what their life looks like and breaking the boundaries of their private life to the public. The profile of each user on social networking sites contains brief information of its users and that sometime could be used to reach other people by the wrong way. Eventually, the media has influenced the private life to be shown in public. In Farnham’s article, “Right now only one company—Social Intelligence in Santa Barbara, Calif.”(para 8) shows how social media contains information about people’s life and their personal information, therefore, employees and schools’ admission use these web sites to help them to select their workers/students. Employees use social media to qualify their applicants and if the applicant has picture with his/her families on his/her profile the more possibility of him getting the job that were offered. However, if the applicant’s profile contain some drunk or usage of drugs experiences, that would be less possibility to get the job offer. This company does the job of researching people’s profiles from social media, specifically social networking sites and they provide the information that they found to the employees to make the final decision of applicants to eliminate the number of candidates. According to Vitak point of view in his article, ‘Teens online privacy risks and the role of parental mediation’, school administration has been using Social Media as an extra condition, besides the tests and students scores. School’s admissions use social networking sites to evaluate students to enter their colleges to make sure that they are not do inappropriate acts such as drinking alcoholic and getting drunk, posting some pictures that has meaning of irresponsible act, and to make sure they will represent the school in the future so that would not affect the school reputation. However, the number of school that are using social media as an extra option to select students have been growing lately, because of student’s concerned about if their posting would hurt the status of their application. According to Loung from Colligatetime.com, “Kaplan representative Colin Gruenwald said the survey began nine years ago when thousands of students were curious about how their digital footprints affect the admissions process.”(para 4). Therefore, the curiosity of students to this matter shaped schools admission to use social networking sites to evaluate student and offer them the admission. Russo in his article, ‘Teachers and social networking sites think before you post’ says that the role of governments from all over the world have helped to reduce the number of children that using social networking sites and created laws that pushed social networks to minimize the age of the users to at least 13 years old. Moreover, Facebook is one of the examples of social networking site that has created “family safety center,” providing to the users and parents the information that is needed for protection from strangers. In addition to that, Facebook has provided a system to make minors be safe as it is mention “placing restrictions on the ability of adults to share and connect with them.”(Facebook, 2013, para.2). Nevertheless, one of the roles of governments such as the United States of American and Korea restrict advertisement companies to not use minors content from social networking sites. According to opinion of Treptein his article ‘Privacy online perspectives on privacy and self-disclosure in the social web’, criminals intend to use social networking sites to check up on people status, so they can commit their crime with having no troubles. Even though, some social networking sites have improved the privacy policies for the users, so everyone can edit the profile’s privacy and not letting anyone to see his/her information. But, still the friends of the person can see the status of the person that is friend with. Therefore, there is a gap that could be used to harm the person itself by knowing that the person will be gone for a trip and posting that on social networking sites contains important information about the trip, such as the time the person is going and when the person is coming as it was stated by Mckinney ” But even on private, her Facebook friends can still see that status...and now they know her home is empty.”(para 4). The information that shared and contains sensitive and personal information could be used for doing something wrong which is commuting a crime. Social networking sites are an engine that contains people information and their daily life posted on profiles. People use social networking sites to post some sensitive information that most of the time considered private information, which could led to another circumstances if it was used by criminals. The users range from teenager to adult but there are a few users that are under 13 years of age. Different institutes assess student’s social website accounts to evaluate them. Likewise, many employers are also concerned about the social activities of their employees. According to research studies, people should be aware about the negative and harmful effects of their social networking activities. However, many of the social networking websites allow some privacy concerns but still the personal information of the account holder is accessible to some people. That means privacy is not guaranteed. Recommendations Social media should be used carefully. One should be careful about the content, which he or she is going to post by his name. Here it is critical that anyone who masters computer and internet skills can easily access your personal information. Therefore, we should try to avoid sharing any of the personal life details. Conclusion The outcomes of the usage of social networking sites are highly important for people to be careful with using these websites. Social networking sites are an engine that contains people information and their daily life posted on profiles. Since the people have became open minded most of them broke the boundaries between public and private life, therefore, people use social networking sites to post some sensitive information that most of the time considered private information which could led to another circumstances if it was used by criminals people. Because they could use the status information from the person’s profile, so they can commit their crime without interfere. However, the users are range from teenager to adult but there are a few users that are under 13 years old, but their comments that had been posted while they were young could be affected them and resulted in the future. Schools admission use social networking sites to evaluate students that are have responsibility when they live on campus, on other hand employees use it to evaluate the right candidates that fit to the job from the bases of personality not only because of the skills that the person have. Eventually, social networking sites contain sensitive information that people share on their profiles and every single text could be used against the person and leave affect on people lives, everyone should be responsible for what they writes and share through social networking sites. References Blattere, H., Johnson, P& Markus, M. (2010), ‘Modern Privacy Shifting Boundaries’, New Forms. Retrieved from http://plus.mnpals.net.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/vufind/Record/007364371/Holdings Bohnert, D & Ross, W. (2010), ‘The influence of social networking web sites’, Cyber Psychology, 13, 341-347. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2009.0193 Griffith, R. (2012), ‘Duty of confidence and the use of social networking sites’, British Journal of Nursing, 21(16), 988-989 Laird, S. (2012), ‘Is Social media destroying Real-world relationships?’ [infograpihc] [Supplemental material]. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/06/14/social-media-real-world-infographic/ Loung, M. (2012), ‘College admission using social media to evaluate applicants’, Collegiate Times, Retrieved from http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/20657/college-admissions-using-social-media-to- evaluate-applicants/p1 McKinney,M.(2009), ‘Criminals using Facebook to get into homes’, WFSA. Retrieved from http://www.wsfa.com/story/10830247/criminals-using-facebook-to-get-into-homes Russo, C. (2012), ‘Teachers and social networking sites think before you post’, The Journal of Law & Social Justice, 5, 1-15. Retrieved from http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/ Sliverman, M. (2010), ‘Social media parenting: raising the digital generation’, [Supplemental material]. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/parenting-social-media/ Trepte, S. & Reinecke, L. (2011), ‘Privacy online perspectives on privacy and self-disclosure in the social web’, Retrieved from http://plus.mnpals.net.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/vufind/Record/007472741/Holdings Vitak, J. (2012), ‘Tweens online privacy risks and the role of parental mediation’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 451-470. DOI: 10.1080/ 08838151.2012.732140. Ak Chase and Accessories, (2011), ‘How Social Media Negatively affects Teens’, Retrieved from http://akchase.com/2015/02/social-media-negatively-affects-teens/ Read More