Impact of Social Networking Sites

on the Youth
Have you ever wondered how much time you spend on
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in a day’s span?
We are all aware that social networking is expanding at an
accelerating pace. To catch up with that our youth is going head
over heels to explore all the exciting updates that pop up on their
electronic devices every day. But we all know that every coin
has two sides. Let’s put light on some of them.
Time Spent on Social Sites
In recent surveys, reports showed that every person on an
average spends at least 1.8 hours on socializing with their
network per day. It is also possible that most of us spend more
time surfing on Google than the total time we do on sleeping. In
this era of computerization, everything is digitalized. Hence it is
nearly impossible to avoid the internet surfing.
Positive Effects of Social Networking
Education has become very convenient with the help of social
media. Students can easily share important data for class work
or assignments. It is also effective for gathering information to
prepare project reports and other educational purposes. Teachers
find it’s easy to keep their students updated with the class and
exam schedules.
Social sites like LinkedIn, Naukri.com etc., save the effort of
doing the whole employment process by traditional methods. It
gives opportunities to candidates who are seeking for particular
job profile. Employees as well as employers can search for jobs
or people of their choice to work for or work with.
The fastest way to advertise anything is to upload it on social
sites. Social media is faster in conveying the news or
information than any other media say radio, television or
newspapers. Also, government sites as well as private sites are
available for filing documents. Ticket booking has become very
serviceable to the customers, may it be for a movie show, a hotel
in a far town or for an overseas travel trip.
Through many years, social media has helped people stay in
contact with their distant friends, relatives and other influential
people in their lives, which would have otherwise been
impossible. Hence social media proves to be an excellent
platform to promote and facilitate innumerable things.
The Expectation of Fame and the Importance of Being Liked
The social media, as knowledgeable or impressive it is, has side
effects going far ends. As we start getting acquainted to it, it
slowly starts pulling us deeper into it. We don’t even understand
when it becomes an addiction!
Many researchers have analyzed behavior of the people who are
highly addicted to the social networking sites. When a post
receives likes and comments, people really seem to like it and
when it happens otherwise, they experience withdrawal. Many
people portray an unreal or fake personality just for the desire to
be liked.
Now the question is, can we rely on the information of a person
uploaded on the social sites?
Negative Effects of Social Networking
No good thing comes without bearing consequences. As
effective as social media is, there is a high chance that you are
using it for wrong purposes. People are found wasting hours
over hours on social sites acquiring zero productive information.
Discount commercials influence people to spend unnecessarily.
Most sites used to have an age limitations earlier, but now with
that being gone, youngsters are getting indulged in surfing at an
increasing rate. And due to their immature age, they usually fall
prey to the cyber bullying. This causes severe effect on the
mental and emotional health of the youth.
Lack of privacy on the social sites has turned out to be the most
threatening thing. Mostly the young generation is unaware of the
policies and end up uploading personal information on social
sites. The commercial sites have access to the private
information and tend to misuse it.
In spite of being aware of the threats of social sites, why are we
turning a blind eye?
The Bottom Line
Is our internet culture destroying us? Is social media taking over
our lives?
We can’t deny the fact that social media has not only become a
part of our lives but our lives seem to revolve around it. Very
few people can resist the temptation of checking for their
messages and status updates every two minutes. The person to
person contact is deteriorating day by day.
Social networking is a very broad source of information and
communication but at the same time it can be misleading as
well. In the end it’s our choice to make, which path we wish to
take!
– Namita Patil

Social networking sites are experiencing a tremendous growth over the past years,
attracting millions of people each year. Social networking sites are virtual communities
in which people hang out for acquaintances and these sites are attracting wide range of
young and engaged audience.

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We all know that youngsters are always giving much consideration to themselves; their
image and a good representation of themselves in society are regarded as something
vital for them and social networking sites help in creating opportunities for self-
expression, sociability, community engagement, creativity and new engagement.
Friendship also is an important relationship for them; youngsters constantly make,
display and break such relation. Social networking sites act as a major medium of
communication for them. It helps them to develop and create relationship between
members who are already connected to a particular social networking site and who
common views and interests. They not only allow individuals to meet strangers, but
rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks

So far there have seen many social networking sites which have been implemented and
this process shall continue during the forthcoming years with more additional features if
possible. Examples of social networking sites are Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5,
LinkedIn, MySpace and these sites acquiring the maximum number of users each year.

The most common one and the one with the maximum number of users is Facebook.
Facebook has become more and more popular since the first time it was created. It was
reported that there were over 500 million active users present on Facebook since it was
created on February 2004.

Through these sites youngsters are able to create a world of them, a world of perfection,
a world where they can represent themselves as they wanted to be in real life. Through
these sites they create a profile of themselves as well as sharing details on them like
their personal photographs as well as share information about them such as their tastes
in music, hobbies, favourite movies etc. It also helps some to find some long lost friends,
love and to connect with their family members from a long distance. They can upload
photos, music and share any application that they want others to view. One of the main
features is comments.

Comments can easily be posted and these comments are usually expressions of
opinions. Gaming applications also form part of these sites and youngsters are the
heavy users of such sites.

Social networking sites comprise many features which attract millions of people to them
and the statistic will undergo an increase in the forthcoming years.

Problem statement
Social networking sites indeed have the greatest impact in today’s world and the
biggest victims are youngsters. They are spending considerable amount time on social
networking sites to stay alive with their friends. There is a component of addictiveness in
these sites and youngsters are getting more and more addicted to them. Youngsters
keep on concentrating only on the facilities that these sites are providing to them, they
completely ignore the negative part of it. Many of them are aware of these negative
consequences but still their degree of addictiveness and their level of usage of these
sites tend to remain unchanged and among these youngsters there are some who are
completely unaware of the negative effects that these sites comprise.

One of the main issues of social networking sites is privacy erosion. Youngsters
unknowingly are revealing personal information about them in their profile and this
information can be easily stolen and misused. One of the most common problems of
social networking sites these days is that some people are stealing the photos of
another person and misuse these photos. People are creating fake profiles on these sites
trying to defame a person and using another person’s identity to perform illegal
activities. Youngsters befriend everyone and reveal personal information on them to
strangers without even knowing the consequences that such act can have.
Another main problem of social networking sites among youngsters is that they are
totally engage in a virtual world that they are not paying attention to the real life around
them. Many parents are concerned about this consequence; their children are spending
bulk of time on these sites that they fear that these sites prevent their kids from learning
relationship skills and they fear that their kids lack social skills and positive interactions
in their real life.

Another problem that youngsters are encountering online is online bullying and sexual
harassment. Unwanted sexual solicitation occurs online when predators asked
youngsters to reveal sexual information about them or force them to get involved into
sexual talk or sexual behavior. Many people try to trap children online by giving false
information on them and youngsters naïve as they are, they easily believe such
nonsense. The most common social networking sites that are used to sexually solicit
underage youth are Facebook and MySpace. Youngsters are indeed vulnerable to sexual
victimization.

the study of this research aims to create an immense level of awareness among the youth exposed to such
social networking sites and findings will not only bear results as to how adversely and positively is the
youth affected by the usage of these sites but also will help the youth to understand the usage of these
networking sites efficiently. Facebook, My Space, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype and Ning are a few such sites
that attract maximum of the youth to tune in to them and thereby embodies their own merits and
demerits that desperately need to create an actual picture among the youth. It has now become an
evident and usual sight to face individuals being insensitive to chat in worshipping places, homes when
relatives and guests are around, highways, schools, colleges and social gatherings wherein they are so
preoccupied and engrossed into their phones that they do not even bother to look up as to where they are
which results in their inability to prioritize as to what is important and what isn’t. Attention has thus
been shifted from real to virtual world and visible to invisible frien