The Impact of Social Networking on Our Daily Lives - Essay Example

The impact of social networking on our daily lives Social networking refers to the exchange of information and services between social actors. Social networking can be divided into three main levels, micro, macro, and meso levels. At the micro level, people relate with individuals. At the macro level people form links with organizations while the meso level is the point of tangency between the two (Partridge 7). Social actors can be individuals, organizations or social institutions. Psychological and sociological theorists argue that every person is a social actor and a significant number of the theories further purport that every person acts towards a better society. The development of formal and informal contacts takes place in the social networks, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Google plus. Statistics show that over 1.2 billion people use facebook as a social network (Hunter 27). Despite the fact that it can be termed by many as the greatest development of the twenty-first century, it is still a high predator against social values, social structures and moral development. This paper aims at discussing the impacts of social networking (both positive and negatives) and arriving to a point of concluding whether social networking should acclaim praise or reprimands. Most people believe firmly that social networks breeds more good than evil in society. There are major positive impacts as a result of electronic information exchange. To start with is the promotion and facilitation of competition in trade. This can be achieved through harmonization of business practices, standardization of information, convenience in reaching out to sister companies and the market. Social networks have enabled consumers to maximize their freedom of choice. Organizations can, therefore, win consumers by producing only the best and also having an up to date integrated informative system. Such like competition enhance economic growth and development. To add further on the impact of social networking to the global economics, millions of people today get employed by social institutions. These employments can be appreciated for alleviating poverty, higher standards of living and the decrease of the dependency ratio. The management of huge organizations can enjoy reduced costs of management this can mainly be through, ease in channeling of information between and/or among branches, eased supervision, and coordination of decision making in different branches. The wind of technological social networking can also be rewarded for positive impacts on health matters. In the USA for instance, the increasing population of the old people as compared to the decreasing population of young people can be termed as one of the mysteries by the growth and development of social networking, the need of care providence increase with old age. The unavailability of young people to provide informal care to the old can be resolved by the use social networks (Peacock 46). The people in need of care keep communicating with formal caregivers at the comfort of their homes. On social relations, social networking can enable people to communicate with acquaintances far away at their comfort. People can initiate, maintain and control relationships beyond geographical, political and economic boundaries. Students today can discuss with their colleagues and teachers through social networks. This has led to more products of research and academic performances on related fields. There still a myriad of other positive fruits of social networking ranging from indirect and direct improvements in job seeking, increasing mobility of labor and taking religion to people yet unreached in the virtual world among many others. On the other hand, social networking can be termed to be a threat to the human society. To begin with, the young people are getting incapacitated to communicate on a face to face basis. This deprivation is a threat to the replenishing role entrusted to the family by the society. A young person who cannot communicate effectively cannot be an effective father as well, this can be evidenced by research showing that, values, beliefs, and norms translating to behavior are learnt from association. More social evils and crimes today result from social networking. Research show that hyper- texting and hyper-networking can be relative to crime, stress, and deviant behavior, drug abuse, indiscreet sexual activity, suicide, and poor academic performance (Ryan 65). Children can also access the social networks with a lot of ease and thus watch, listen and act defiantly. The networks do not have mechanisms to prevent logins to children and the ones that are in place can be tricked easily (Partridge 17). From the benefit of getting social with people with no limit or borders can be destructive. The capability to sustain social contracts with no face to face occurrences can turn people into inhuman relations and isolation. A study conducted on an animal did show that isolation can be responsible for the imbalances in brain hormones. Isolation can lead to strange levels of stress and depression as a result of what others call the benefit of technology. Another terrible negative impact on social relations could be the loss of privacy. When the privacy of a person gets compromised the individual runs into the risk of insecurity, his or her details can be used to conduct crime. The loss of privacy can also lead to termination of jobs due to opinions made in the networks. In most times, people forget that somebody can see their activities in the networks and thus fall into the trap. Researches show that privacy mechanisms in the social networks get diminishing in service delivery, and thus increased incidences of cyber crime (Ryan 68). Phishing commonly referred to as scams, can also cause tremendous losses to an individual. These losses vary from social losses to financial losses depending on the nature of the crime. At this juncture it is expedient to focus on one of the social networks. Facebook can today be regarded as a giant of social networking. The site yields lots of positive impacts. For instance, people make friends chatting in Facebook and amazingly some even lead into marriage. Millions of people today make business engagements in the site whilst others primarily use the site to find pleasure. These advantages have also come along with a list of demerits. Digital crime has finally its’ in Facebook endangering lives of so many innocent individuals. Pornographic snapshots and messages constantly flow in the site. In addition the site has been a threat to the informal social fabric. Children get socialized by the international community rather than the immediate member of society who share with them values, norms and believes. Consequently, deviant behavior among children is more rampant today (Hunter 32). Social networking can, therefore, be constructive or destructive depending on an array of factors. It can, however, not be termed harmless to human societies. Appropriate measures can be taken to develop social networks in line with the formulation and implementation of policies that would otherwise, reduce negative impacts of social networking in economics, culture, education, moral development, politics and all other spheres of life. These measures could include improvement on privacy enhancement mechanisms, protection of children from cyber bullying among other crimes, education of the public on the usage of social networks. People should enhance face to face interactions to prevent the rise of isolation in families and workplaces (Ryan 72). Works Cited Hunter, Nick. Social Networking: Big Business on Your Computer. New York: Gareth Stevens Pub, 2013. Print. Partridge, Kenneth. Social Networking. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2011. Print. Peacock, Michael. Php 5 Social Networking: Create a Powerful and Dynamic Social Networking Website in Php by Building a Flexible Framework. Birmingham: Packt Pub, 2010. Print. Ryan, Peter K. Social Networking. New York: Rosen Central, 2011. Print. Read More