Kamran's Full Essay

Online Social Networking:

Another Miracle of Internet Technology

We are moving towards a world, in which computing technology is omnipresent and our life seems incomplete without it. One of the revolutionary technologies that have been with us for two decades is Internet technology. Since Internet technology supports several ways of communication, it remained to be a very useful tool/way of information exchange throughout the world. As one of its consequence, Internet has now become a tool for the social aspect of our lives and we are moving towards a virtual connected world during this decade. It can be realised in form of online social networking sites. Currently, there are more than hundreds of online social networking websites. People can socialize using theses websites through online communities as well as instant messaging. In this essay, I’ll examine how online social networking is affecting our daily lives. My thesis is online social networking is a miracle of Internet technology that provides an efficient and the best way of socializing between people.

Social networking sites are defined as a web based service that allow user to create a profile/user-account and build personal network that connects to other users. In a profile, you can share pictures, videos, and your personal details such as home address, phone number, as well as educational details. It is noticed these days that this service is growing very fast all over the world. As an evident, one can refer the Ofcom’s International Communications Market (2007) report. According to this report the adults ratio of using social networking sites in the UK is 39%, which is highest in all of the European countries. Another survey report (ComScore, 2007, U.K) tells us that “UK Internet users clock up an average of 23 visits and 5.3 hours on social networking sites each month”. Further, figures show 24.9 million individual visitors in August 2007 (ComScore, 2007, U.K). According to Hitwise Figures (Hitwise, 2007,UK), the most popular dedicated social networking sites in the UK are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo5. In these types of social networking services users can share information about their interests and activities. They can create their own community of friends as well as can share photographs, videos and other material of common interest to the entire group of friends. These services also allow users to customise and maintain their profiles/user-accounts according to their needs. For example, a teenager’s MySpace profile could have a big warm welcome in sparkly pink, with music, photos, a love tester, guestbook and dedication pages; all customised down to the scrollbars and cursor with pink candy stripes, glitter, angels, flowers, butterflies, hearts and much more. One of the users said, “you can just change it (user profile) all the time and so you can show different sides of your personality/yourself” (Danielle, 13, quoted in Livingstone, 2008a) (Children & Society Volume 24, 2010).

One of the consequence of online social networking services is the large circle of friends or friends of friends maintained by social networking teenagers. A survey in US for age group of 13–18 years found that “the average number of social networking contacts is 75” (Harris Interactive, 2006). A second important effect on teenagers is that it brings self confidence up, as we can see with this evidence which says, “social networking sites enable them to overcome the embarrassments of face-to-face communication, because they afford asynchronous, noncommittal, playful interaction in which the management of ‘face’ and negotiation of flirting, misinterpretation and innuendo is more controllable” (Livingstone, 2008a). In addition, not only this, nowadays online social networking services are also helping in getting good education and for learning purposes. Social networking services provide another way to transfer technical and social skills through formal as well as informal way (Crook and Harrison, 2008). Moreover, very important feature of most social networking services are permissions. They basically allow users to access information, connection and profile of other users and groups, as well as determined level of access, which can vary in different services.

In contrast, new technologies and opportunities tend to bring new risks; there are number of issues surrounding these social websites. The UK’s Home Office Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet (2008) report a series of risks to children’s safety related with social networking services which says that, “bullying, harassment, exposure to harmful content, theft of personal information, sexual grooming, violent behaviour, encouragement to self-harm and racist attacks” (Children & Society Volume 24, 2010), are the following risks, which can be resulted in this type of Internet service. Another issue of social networking is of addiction. Many of these sites are extremely addictive and it is easy to lose our valuable time browsing in different profiles, especially on sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Orkut, where several public galleries, games and partial personal details of users are easily available. Perhaps the biggest drawback of online social networking services is identity theft. In order to create a profile on a social networking site, we have to share some information about ourselves. Many sites allow you to decide how much information you want to share; while others give you only the options to hide e-mail address, contact details and/or birthday. In the case of maximum available public information about you on these sites can have potential for others to impersonate you and/or to use your profile information for some kind of illegal activities.

Finally, here are some figures collected from users of 9-19 years old in an online survey in the UK. According to the survey “31% had seen violent and 11% had seen racist content. Further, 31% had received sexual comments online and 28% had been sent unsolicited sexual material. A third had received bullying comments online and 8% had gone to a meeting with someone first met online” (Livingstone and Bober, 2005). According to experts views one of the reasons for this is the disclosure of personal information on personal profiles, which I have already mentioned. Another effect of online social networking services on the society is promotion of isolation that may lead to mental health issues. At one hand, social networking enables people to get in touch with friends, classmates and family; while at the other hand, it is the source of physical isolation of being alone in a room with a computer.

In summary, this is an un ending discussion whether you should or should not use (or be a part of) an online social network. Fortunately, when comparing the pros and cons of online social networking services, we can conclude that there are more advantages of online social networking as compared to its disadvantages. For example, it opens new opportunities and ways to stay connected with the world, new ways of knowledge/skills exchange, new ways of doing business all over the world and so on. Therefore, with a few healthy habits, precautions and sound judgement, you can avoid or minimize the risk of any unpleasant thing happening to you. As a whole online social networking is a miracle of Internet technology, that provides you a great experience, fun and any time, any where connectivity with all over the world.

References:

1. Young People and Social Networking Services: A ChildNet International Research Report, www.digizen.org, last accessed on 15/03/2010.

2. On the Rapid Rise of Social Networking Sites: New Findings and Policy Implications, Children and Society, Vol. 24, (2010) pp. 75–83.

3. Ofom (2007), The International Communications Market 2007 Report, www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/icmr07.

4. ComScore (2007) U.K. Social Networking Site Usage Highest in Europe. www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1801.

5. Hitwise (2007), UK. Retail and Social Networking, www.hitwise.co.uk/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/retail.php