Problems with Social Networking

Introduction

        I have decided to do my controversial topic on the problems of social networking. Social networking websites are virtual sites that encourage and foster interaction among members of a group by allowing them to post personal information, communicate with other users and connect their personal profiles to others' profiles. We live in a world where technology has changed the way people communicate, the way they are informed and how they do business. Traditional social networks have expanded from a few dozen acquaintances to hundreds of friends, friends of friends, connections and followers. We live in a world where people would rather communicate by sending a text message from their mobile phone, post comments on their favorite online network. Rarely anyone now a days communicates by actually talking on the phone. So the question is, is using social media and social networking a good thing or bad thing?  Here are a few important facts about social media:

• In 2013, a study showed that 79% of all adults in the United States had at least one social network profile.
• 2.1 billion People in the world have social media accounts.
• Mobile phones now make up 72% of internet traffic to these sites.
• 70 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram every single day, and that is a number that is steadily rising.

Body

I can’t say that I am completely against social networking or social media because that would be hypocritical of me because I use them just as much as everyone else does. But I can’t deny the fact that I believe social networking has done more harm than good. Nowadays, a lot of people are using social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumbler and so on. Since the Internet has propagated rapidly, social networking has progressed a lot. The generalization of the internet makes us to live conveniently and fast. People are almost always using smart phones, tablets, or other devices which can access the internet. These smart devices help us to do social networking easily. It helps contact friends, family, and other people even though they live far away. It could be, however, abused, if you don’t use properly.

One huge problem with social media now a days is students who use social media a lot tend to have lower grades than those who don’t. “Students who use social media had an average GPA of 3.06 while non-users had an average GPA of 3.82 and students who used social networking sites while studying scored 20% lower on tests. For college students their grades dropped 0.12 points for every 93 minutes above the average 106 minutes spent on Facebook per day. Two-thirds of teachers believe that social media does more to distract students than to help academically” (Are Social Networking Sites Good for Our Society?, 2015).

For example, I can vogue for this statement. When I am sitting at home by myself and are supposed to be doing homework, I tend to get way too distracted by social media. I have had to come to the point now when im doing homework I have to turn my phone off  or put it in another room so I have no distractions and are able to focus more on my school work.

Another big problem with social networking is what you put on your sites. The best thing to do is to avoid putting anything online that could reflect badly on you to any business. Pictures of you acting unprofessionally could harm your chances of getting a job, or make a poor impression on a new client. If you want to use a social networking sites for personal as well as professional networking, consider creating a separate account under a nickname, so you can keep your professional account clean. Job recruiters reported negative reactions to finding profanity, poor spelling or grammar, illegal drugs, sexual content, pictures of or with alcohol, and religious content on potential employees’ social networking pages.

In other words, most employers now do look at your Facebooks, Instagram, and twitter pages before deciding about the hiring process, especially if it is for an upper level type of job. Employers want to know the kind of person that they are considering hiring. It’s not that having social media sites is bad, it’s the stuff that you put on them that makes them bad and causes the problems that there are now a days.

For example, during my last interview with the job that I am currently working at now, they asked me if I would mind if they looked at my Facebook page, I said no I didn’t mind because obviously it looks worse if you tell them not to look at it. I normally don’t post a lot of stuff on my Facebook page but I do get tagged in quite a bit of stuff. My friends will usually tag me in silly posts or post pictures of us from being out one weekend and that is the kind of stuff that employers will see. It doesn’t matter that im not the one who posted it, they can still see the kind of stuff that people do no matter who posts it, and believe it or not, if employers don’t like what they see on your Facebook pages, you most likely will not get hired.

I know a few people who are managers at their work and who have to do the interviewing and hiring processes. They have told me a few stories about people who were just great during the interview, but once they looked at their social networking sites they did not like what they saw. Because of the things they saw on their sites they decided not to hire some of these people. Yes there are people who can be very professional at work and not so professional outside of work. If you work in a very professional atmosphere and are dealing with people or clients, it’s just as easy for those people to go look at your social networking sites as well. Depending on what they find, you could lose customers or clients in the blink of an eye just because of what they found on your social media sites. Employers and customers want to work with people who are professional both at work and outside of work, and people who are responsible and trustworthy. Social networking sites tell a lot about someone, without that person even knowing it or realizing that it’s happening.

During the past decade, online social networking has caused profound changes in the way people communicate and interact. It is unclear, however, whether some of these changes may affect certain normal aspects of human behavior and cause psychiatric disorders. Several studies have indicated that the prolonged use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may be related to signs and symptoms of depression. In addition, some authors have indicated that certain social networking sites activities might be associated with low self-esteem, especially in children and adolescents. Other studies have presented opposite results in terms of positive impact of social networking on self-esteem. The relationship between social networking sites use and mental problems to this day remains controversial, and research on this issue is faced with numerous challenges (Pantic, 2014).