Social Networking Sites- merits and demerits

In this era of technology, social networking sites have become extremely popular among the youth as well as the professional people, whether it is a metropolitan city like Delhi or a small city like Bhopal. They took hardly any time in getting popular among millions and billions of people all over the world when they arrived just a few years back. While sites like Facebook and MySpace are for the people who want to share common interests and passions; sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are more professional and help the businessmen promote their businesses. Keeping in mind, the growing popularity of these sites and the effect it has and the benefits that it brings along, it can be easily predicted that its popularity is sure to grow much more.

However, everything has its merits and de-merits and so do social networking sites have. You must be aware of the recent Delhi High Court summon to 21 social networking sites including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and YouTube to face trial for allegedly webcasting ‘objectionable’ content. This summon signifies that these sites do have such content which is objectionable to many people. So let’s now look at the various merits and de-merits of social networking sites.

Merits

·         It has made the world compact: Social networking sites have significantly made the world compact. Today, you can connect and talk to people sitting miles away from you; you can be friends with people who have other friends, and so on. There is potential in such a common situation. By using a social networking site, you can do what you can and get connected with these people to form a web of connections. All these connections through social networking sites have made the world compact.

·         It is cheap: Certainly, it's cheaper to use online social networking for both personal and business use because most of it is usually free. Its low cost to connect with people, both on the personal and professional front, is also one of the reasons of such wide popularity of social networking sites.

·         Increases awareness among people: These days, social networking sites play a very significant role in creating social awareness among people about many ill practices that take place in our society, for instance, awareness about Anna Hazare’s agitation and awareness about empowerment of women.

De-merits

·         Security: Security is one of the topmost concerns of social networking sites. This is mainly because the social networking sites allow you to display your personal information such as name, location, and email address. There are some people who always in search of a fake identity. If they get all the information about you on internet, they may use your identity for different type of illegal activities, which may cause you problems in future.

·         A little time consuming: Keeping up with social networking can be a full time job. You have to make sure that you respond to people in a reasonable time. That is not always 100% possible.

·         Objectionable content: Social networking sites have been blamed to put obscene and objectionable content on their sites which is not good for young children. As mentioned above, the sites have also been summoned due to this.