Advantages And Disadvantages Of Social Networking

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, who, for example, share interests and/or activities.

A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging.

Social networking sites are now a great source of communication, and serve the purpose of bringing long lost friends and families together. There are now many such social networking sites around, that have laid down a platform for people of different parts of the world to come together.

Also, these sites are treated as a stage to set up small businesses or even promote brands to gain some potential clients.

However, the trend of being a part of these social networking sites is more visible among teenagers and youth. These youngsters are at all times engrossed in the world of networking, without really knowing its benefits as well as dangers. As social networking comes with many advantages, it also has its own bad side to it.

And let us discuss about the various advantages and dis advantages of Social Networking.

Advantages of Social Networking
There are so many ways in which social networking has changed our lives for the better. Let us have a look at the most important ones.

• The role and future of social networking sites is to maintain simple and easy interaction among people. Friends who have lost touch can again connect with each other always stay in touch. Also, with the various privacy settings, one can customize their profiles and categorize their friends and family accordingly, and make groups to make chatting easy. These sites always help people to stay connected most of the times, and makes sharing and talking easy.
• Other than only connecting with friends, many people can even meet and talk to other people who come from different countries, and get to know their culture and way of living. It is good platform for getting to know different people.
• Also, it provides us with cheaper communication. Through social networking sites, promoting your business idea is simple, as one can find potential clients by just sitting at home.
• Sharing pictures and videos is also possible through these sites. They give the opportunity to create your albums and videos, and post them in your profile.
• With the facility of sharing pictures and also chatting, the distance between people has reduced too.

Disadvantages of Social Networking
Though these sites bring a lot of benefits to people all around, the basic purpose of them is being abused too. Let us take a look at the various disadvantages of social networking sites too.

• Social networking sites require people to create their own profile on the site. These profiles are created out of revealing one's personal details, which could be misused by other unknown people.
• The profile demands the certain interests and contact details that could cause a problem for youngsters.
• Also, some youngsters are willing to abuse someone else's space or privacy, and even create a fake profile to cause them problems. In this case, the person must immediately block such a profile, which will stop such kind of disturbances to their privacy.

• Online scams, stalking, identity theft, etc., are other huge and stressful problems that are caused under these social networking sites.
• There is also a possibility of your account being hacked. This could be a huge problem as the hacker might tend to forward obscene pictures or send messages through your account to your social network. To avoid this, one must keep a check on the privacy settings, and the password must be renewed from time to time.
• Millions of people around the world are addicted to these networking mediums, and for no constructive purposes, which results in a lot of waste of time.

People of all ages can be a part of the social network. However, maintaining strict privacy and not intruding into anyone else's space is essential to avoid any sort of bad practices. These sites are brought up for the purpose of bringing people of similar interests together, and to even promote an idea of business to reach out to people all around the world. When the authenticity of such sites is maintained, then one can realize the actual purpose and potential of social networking websites.

Warning! Most of these social networks, just like online dating services, require users to give out certain pieces of information. This usually includes a user's age, gender, location, interests, and perhaps a picture. Releasing very personal information is usually discouraged for safety reasons

Social Networking For Educational Purpose:

Almost 60 percent of students who use social networking talk about education topics online and , surprisingly, more than 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork. Yet the vast majority of school districts have stringent rules against nearly all forms of social networking during the school day — even though students and parents report few problem behaviors online.

Social networks are also emerging as online yearbooks, both public and private. One such service is MyYearbook which allows anyone from the general public to register and connect. A new trend emerging are private label yearbooks only accessible by students, parents and teachers of a particular school similar to Facebook beginning within Harvard.