The term social networks appeared
long before the internet and online networks. In 1954 it was introduced by an
American sociologist James Barns. Recently social networks become more and more
popular. And with their growth they start to influence all spheres of people's
lives. The results of different researches say that a half of the internet is
already covered by social networks. There are various social networks that we
can use to interact with anybody nowadays. Some of the most popular online
social networks are such as Face book, Twitter, MySpace, Flicker, Friendster,
Foursquare and many more.
According to Wikipedia, a social
networking service is an online service, platform or site that focuses
on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people
to share interests or activities and people with similar or somewhat similar
interests, backgrounds or activities make their own communities. A social
network service consists of a representation of each, their social links and a
variety of additional services. Social networking sites allow users to share
ideas, activities, events and interests within their individual networks.
The good points related to social networks are
they enhance people’s friendship and love relationship because they allow users
to seek and share the information to form a new relationship community.
Secondly, it would create a community those users who make new friends without
geographical boundaries. Thirdly, it would help the users to find love
partners. These of characteristics highlight the components of enhancing
people’s several kind of relationships in reality. However, I do agree that the
use of Internet can lead to isolation. As we get used to interact online, we
will spend most of our times with Internet. This in turn causes us to abandon
face-to-face interaction where bonds and relationships with family and others
can be enhanced.
Many researches proved that people who are
actively involved in online social networking obviously show their bad effects on
actual relationship with people in their life. It is estimated that 68% of the
world’s population has visited a social networking site. Face book has the
largest group of users estimating 400 million users as of February of 2010 and
has just added 140 million new users in April of 2010. According to research
done by All Face book and Online Dating University, they claimed
that the social networking changing the
way we interact with each other in the real world. For instance, using the
social network can help boost your self-esteem. However, constantly checking
your profile on the site can cause stress and anxiety that you might miss
important updates from friends, offend others with your own comments, have to ‘friend’ someone you don’t like, or
might not be entertaining enough to be accepted by your friends.
Online social networking actually detracts
from the communication abilities of society, especially the young. When our
communication skills are gradually lessened, we begin to spend less time
talking to families, experiencing more daily stress, and feeling more lonely
and depressed. Moreover, lack of personal communication due to excessive online
social networking usage can have an overall negative effect on mental and
physical health. As we all know that communication skills are critical for
everyone, yet use of the online social networking is undermining this
development from time to time.
Larry D. Rosen, a social media researcher at
California State University in his plenary talk entitled, “Poke Me: How Social
Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids said that, teens who use Face book
more often show more narcissistic tendencies while young adults who have a
strong Face book presence show more signs of other psychological disorders,
including antisocial behaviours, mania and aggressive tendencies. On the
other hand, some argue that the online social networking has a positive effect
on social interactions because it allows us to form friendships online.
However, the capacity to meet a virtually unlimited number of people is
actually extremely negative; write Jean-Francois Coget and Yamauchi Yutaka in
their paper, “Untangling the Social Impact of the Internet.” In addition, I
also do believe that we will not be positively impacted by communicating
through a computer screen if we already do not have the self-confidence to
socially interact in reality.
On top of that, I believe the advancement of
technology has negatively impacted our social interactions because it detaches
us from what is happening around us, obstructs communication, and spreads the
concept of instant gratification. Society must be able to utilize technology
while not allowing it to impede social interactions, particularly for those who
are easily influenced during our formative years. In addition, our world must
learn to embrace technology without allowing it to negatively impact the
creation of functional adults in society.
As social networking sites become more popular by the day, the rise
of negative social effects within our society also greaten. We have and will
see further instances of cyber bullying; more cases of identity theft and
additional privacy breaches. We will also see our strong relationships diluted
to a more superficial and ‘convenient’ type of relationship. We will continue
to see a further decrease in productivity within workplace and also more
instances of company’s reputations and names being brought into disrepute.
Social networking sites have had a huge negative impact on our mental and
social health and will continue to do so into the future. It is also now
evident that social networking sites facilitate all these problems, and without
them they would cease to exist. Therefore it is undeniably true those online
social networks in fact cause more harm than good to our real social
interaction day by day.
As a conclusion, internet life which involved online social networking
cannot stand on itself without real-life communication. If we understand the
qualities of face-to-face communication that influence the impact of such
communication on people and their social interaction, we would be able to
predict the probable influence of any new communication technology. Obviously,
people use the internet, in other words to help them achieve their real-life
goals. And rather than technology's changing people's social and psychological
reality, in other words, people change their use of technology to facilitate
their creation of a desired social reality.
Last but not least, the online social network users should closely
examine their behaviour, to ensure that excessive time online will not
negatively impact their real social interaction tremendously. We shouldn't
throw our computers out the window, but neither should we charge on blindly
into complete dependence on the internet. As with many things in life, it seems
that moderation and balance is the key to maximizing the online social network
positive effect. Therefore, I still strongly believe that
online social network has giving us a bad influence to our lives affect our
real social interaction rather than good influence.
