Negative impact of social networking sites

21 October, 2012

The social networking sites are becoming a lifeline for people; almost everyone is using this platform and this also includes celebrities and businessmen. Many people wake up and first check their Facebook and Twitter accounts instead of reaching for a newspaper. According to a survey, the Internet users spend about 22 percent of their time on social networking sites.

THE SOCIAL media can be called a new platform for communication; you use it to write the things happening in your life or about your feelings and get to know the same from others. Since people spend their precious time on social networking sites, so it becomes very important to point out its importance in the society.

Most of the social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. provide their service for free but still these sites earn revenue in billions. Many of the users feel that their personal data on these social sites is safe, but it is not true, according to makeuseof.

Though Facebook and Twitter have led to a positive change in the communication between the people but its darker side is affecting the society a lot. The negative consequences of these social networking sites are either long-term or short-term. If you just dig a little to know how it has influenced the world then you will get to know the potential negative impacts of these social networking sites on the society as a whole.

The Facebook has changed the meaning of friends. Usually friends are those people who are very closely associated with one another. But do you talk to or spend time with all the friends in your friend list? There are several people who have thousands of friends in their list, but they really don't care what they are up to. This has deteriorated the meaning of friendship.

According to a research done by a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, the new generation is at the risk of developing poor self-control, short attention spans and obsessive personalities and the reason behind all this is their addiction towards the social networking sites.

The biggest impact of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter on the society is the very concept of privacy, which seems to be inexorably fading at a great pace. The Facebook makes our personal information like the full name, birthday, relationships, work history, interests and hobbies, accessible to everyone. And all this becomes an advantage for the advertisers and marketers.