Social Networking Sites Free Essays

PROJECT SYNOPSIS Project Title: Study on how social networking sites effect lives of people Project Guide: Group: Introduction The social networking sites are gaining a lot of popularity these days with almost all of the educated youth using one or the other such site. These have played a crucial role in bridging boundaries and crossing the seas and enabling them to communicate on a common platform. It has become a popular and a potential mean for them to stay friends with the existing ones and to grow up their social circle at least in terms of acquaintances. We will write a custom essay sample on Social Networking Sites or any similar topic only for you Order Now The question regarding the safety, privacy and the legal issues have been cropping up all this time. Through this research we try to find out the impact of these networking sites on the personal and professional lives of people using them. It is a very subjective question to answer and is very opinion based and the same is reflected in the research methodology adopted by us. The report is initiated with the definition of the objective followed with the research methodology used along with the research design, sample size, methods used for the purpose of conducting survey. It also incorporates the sampling frame and the data collection procedure. Subsequent to this is the Introduction to the networking sites along with a brief description of the most popular sites. Then the issues of concern which have come up along the way in all these years since these sites gained popularity are discussed. The various issues and concerns of the respondents are also incorporated there. The next part of the research has the literature surveys which are the articles we took up from the published reports. We then analyzed and interpreted the data at length. The last part deals with the suggestions and recommendations that the group has come up with after carefully analyzing and incorporating the opinion of all concerned. Objective of the study In this age of globalization, the world has become too small a place thanks to the electronic media and portals. Communication has become effective as never before thanks to the advent of internet. The social networking sites have also played a crucial role in bridging boundaries and crossing the seas and bringing all people at a common platform where they can meet like minded people or find old friends and communicate with them. It has become a potential mean to relation building and staying in touch with all known. Hence the objective that we wanted to achieve through our research is to: Find out the influence of social networking sites on the personal and professional life of the people- how it affects their relations, what are its uses for each individuals and how have they been influenced by these sites. Methodology The primary methods of data collection that is questionnaire technique was used to collect the data required. Respondents include both male and female. Convenience sampling method has been adopted under the non-probability sampling technique and about 100 samples have been collected for the study. Statistical Tools For Analysis The collected data has been analyzed using percentage analysis and diagrams. LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 1) The study has been conducted over a period of 3 months respondents have been restricted to 100. CHAPTER SCHEME Chapter I It gives a brief introduction about the study, objective, methodology limitation of the study. Chapter II This chapter includes the literature review Chapter III It covers the analysis and interpretation of the collected data. Chapter IV It covers the various findings and suggestions of the study along with the conclusion. How to cite Social Networking Sites, Essay examples Social Networking Sites Free Essays Social networking sites Online social networking site is a very common tool for communicating and socializing with each other. Nowadays, most of the adolescent like to use Facebook. There is a rapid growth of the number of user of social networking sites. We will write a custom essay sample on Social Networking Sites or any similar topic only for you Order Now According the recent research, Kreutz (2009) stated that â€Å"starting from 1997 to 2010 there are some 1. 5 billion users of social networking websites† (p. 222). This shows that how popular the social networking site is. Although many parents think that there are many existing dangers in social networking sites, it is good for both education and interpersonal relationship for the teenagers. This essay will discuss the benefits and negative effects of using social networking sites for young people: enlarge and maintain the relationship, develop greater awareness of social issues and attract the online predators to conduct their criminal activities. One of the advantage is the teenagers can enlarge the friendship and maintain the existing relationship by using social networking sites. Social networking sites provide a platform for connecting with the friends. For maintaining the old relationship, social networking site is very convenient for teenagers to have conversation with friends, share their photos, videos and view others’ status. Dunne, Lawlor and Rowley (2010) pointed out that the purpose of most of the users that using SNS is to see what is new in their friends’ status (p. 53). In Facebook, one of the social networking sites, friend will share their current situation and their recent activities by uploading the new photos, videos and new comments in their profile pages. To the sum up, these sites provide an invaluable connection to our old life we had left. Although you go very far away, friends also know what you are doing by seeing your status. Apart from all this, these sites also have another important function. You can expand your social circle effectively. Before the appearance of the Internet, people just used some methods simple like sending letters, calling the others and even physically meeting each other to build the relationship. Nowadays these sites can help you to make new friends easily. Kate (2010) remarked that â€Å"it’s a good way of talking to boys, you can post a comment on their site or ask them to be your friend without being embarrassed or feeling stupid† (p. 53). On the social networking sites, users can build relationship with anyone they want. It is very easy for them to find the people who have the similar or shared interests with them. You can talk about yourself, your identity and your interests and make friends that way. Furthermore, they can present a positive self-identity in social networking sites. This is one of their methods to attract people to make friends with them. They will make themselves look good, such as pick the best photos, show off their coolest friends and just make fun. In conclusion, social networking sites is a form of connection to our old lift and also a good tool that making friends in online. The other advantage is more adolescents develop greater awareness of social issues because of social networking sites. Youth is the social pillars in the future; they largely contribute to the social development. They are playing the leading role in solving social problems, so it is important for increasing teenagers’ awareness of social issues. In Social Networking sites, the adolescents like to communicate with people sharing the same thought and interest. Except making friends, social networking sites also used to discuss the social issues. Jain, Gupta and Anand (2012) commented that â€Å"this is a pool of social problems which requires attention of majority so that we can fight against them as a united country and make the society more peaceful† (p. 36). For instance, there are more than 150 pages about social issues such as human rights, corruption, girls education have uploaded in the last few months in social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Orkut. According to the research of Jain, Gupta and Anand (2012), the main age group of participate in discussing these social issues is 20-40; they actively give their justification on these subjects (p. 42). This result shows that because of the social networking usages, youth were more active in discussing the social issues. In addition to discussion, the users also like to hold different political activities in Facebook for inviting others to join it, such as parade, hunger strike†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Various protests have been done by many social activists they gathered through social networking. Furthermore, social networking sites also provide a place for the groups from different countries including minority groups and subcultures who never physically get the space to express their opinion and belief. All the people can use these websites to participate and voice themselves. As these social issues need regular meeting for discussing and expressing their views, teenagers can use them to meet periodically or regularly depending on their and others’ requirement. Therefore, these sites is acting as an office, they can hold the meetings and political activities regularly and inviting new members to join the discussion. All in all, most of the information of social issues is obtained from social networking sites. Adolescents are getting more aware about social issues because of discussing the debatable topics and news articles on these sites. These sites are proving them chance to bring thoughts of people on these social issues. Therefore, social networking sites is good for educating the adolescants. Apart from advantages, there is also negative effect by using social networking sites for teenagers. The social networking sites attract the online predators to conduct their criminal activities. These social networking sites suggest people to put all their personal information on their profile page when they are registering as their new members; it is easy for criminals to get this information. In Facebook, teenagers like to put all the information including personal image, name, date of birth, hometown and ZIP code in their profile page. The criminal can use this information to find out a person’s sensitive medical information and security number. They also can easily estimate physical location of a person by using the information provided on Facebook profile page. People are least bothered about their profile privacy. Although there is an option of visibility on the user profile fields on these sites. This means user can decide which information can be seen by everyone on the network, but most of the teenagers tend to keep their profiles open to everyone. They are happy to share their personal information in online world. Fukuyama, Lewis and Weigert (2007) in their respected papers claimed that â€Å"trust is a critical determinant in personal or face to face relationships†(p. 48). This means trust is an important factor that determines the crime is success or not. It will not be very difficult for an online predator to gain trust from an individual by employing interactions, especially most of the online predators prefer to meet and entice their victims online. If an online predator is being trusted by a teen and successfully become one of his friend in Facebook, this means this online predator can find their victims in this teen’s friend list. There is a lot of reports about criminal activities involving the social networking sites can be heard. For example, according to â€Å"Facebook-crime† (2010), Ashleigh Hall, a 17 years old girl, was murdered by a man who gets acquainted in Facebook. Actually, that man is a 33 years old man and he created a Fake profile as a teenager. This shows that the major problem is that there is no method to verify the actual identity on online and it is too easy for online predator to gain access the personal information on these sites. In conclusion, these sites are a good way of maintaining relationship and building new relationship. However, there are many existing dangers of using these sites, so a user should be careful. Do not put too many personal data on these sites, it is risky that this data may being used in bad way. The teenagers should keep this data properly, do not get tricked by older people who lie about their age and who are online. The advantages of using these social networking sites outweigh its disadvantage, so I agreed the teenagers to use these sites. The growth of social networking sites shows a significant change in social and personal behaviour of Internet user. These sites largely help teenagers’ interpersonal relationship become closer, but everything can be used for a bad purpose as well as good. We need to be more careful, prevent getting trapped by online predators. Reference list Das, B. , Sahoo, J. (2011). Social networking sites – a critical analysis of its impact on personal and social life. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(14), 222-226. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com. libraryproxy. griffith. edu. au/docview/904521761/13AEEEA44CD5BA312BC/1? accountid=14543 Datar, T. , Mislan, R. (2010). Social networking: A boon to criminals. Proceedings of the Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law, 48-50. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com. libraryproxy. griffith. edu. u/docview/856125630/Record/13AEEC9AE784B9975E7/1? accountid=14543 Dunne, A. , Lawlor, A. , Rowley, J. (2010). Young people. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 4(1), 53. doi: http://dx. doi. org. libraryproxy. griffith. edu. au/10. 1108/17505931011033551 Jain, R. , Gupta, P. , Anand, N. (2012). Impact of social networking sites in the changing mindset of youth on social issues – a study of delhi-ncr youth. Re searchers World, 3(2Part2), 37-42. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com. libraryproxy. griffith. edu. au/docview/1017533989/Record/13AEECBE3A9750E4AAD/1? accountid=14543 How to cite Social Networking Sites, Essay examples Social Networking Sites Free Essays There’s Something Missing We communicate with family and friends on Facebook, Myspace, and follow people on Twitter, email, texting, but we never stop to think that there is something that is just not there. Social Networking has become our main source of communication. What ever happened to picking up the phone or going over to your loved one’s homes to ask them a question? Instead we send them a message via a social network and wait for a response. We will write a custom essay sample on Social Networking Sites or any similar topic only for you Order Now We have the ability to see what is going on in the lives of people we would never really talk to face-to-face. Why should it matter what they are doing and why, above all, are we so addicted to it? You may have 1000 friends on Facebook, but how many of those friends would be there for you if you really needed them? It is a lot to think about, especially since social networking rapidly evolved. So what is missing? The sound of the voice, facial expressions, hand gestures, are all things that we use to set the mood of the conversation. Why does any of this even matter? Why Does it Matter? Why does it even matter if you can’t hear a persons voice, see the expressions on their face, or see any hand gestures that may be going on, when you are having a conversation with them? One word, confusion. When you conmmunicate through a social network you are not really connected ot dedicated to the conversation you are in. You can’t give off any emotion to the other person. Misunderstandings and arguments can easily arise this way. For example, someone in the family passes away. You get a message on Myspace informing you. You send a message back and say I am so sad. You get a message back saying it doesn’t seem like you are that sad, while you are posting pictures on your profile. Of course to get your message across you could have said, with a tear in my eye, I will never forget that family member, I loved them so much, now sobbing, but not everyone writes like that. Even if they did, the visual effect would give off a more comfortable feeling. You can’t really let anyone know that you are truely there for them if you are not face-to-face. What if someone just needs a hug after a long sentimental conversation? You wouldn’t be there to do that. Social networking can be good but we don’t need to forget our values that we grew up with, and we don’t need to forget to pass them on to our children. How can we Increase Face-to-Face Time? Social Networking can become an addiction. It can be a good source for information or sending mass messages or even keeping in contact, on a regular basis, with people who live far away. Social Networking does take away from interacting with others. Some people like that and it’s why they do it. Some people don’t like to be face-to-face with others, especially when it isn’t the best of times to talk to someone. We should all try to increase our face-to-face time though. Put the phone or computer down and go out for lunch with friends and family and talk about your lives. Doing this keeps your social life active and lets others know you care enough to give them more than a message. When something important happens speak to someone face-to-face. It will make you feel better faster and you will realize that it will help to see emotion on someone face once in a while. Don’t completely cut your real social life out and remember to pass that n to your children and this world gets more technology based everyday. Remember what matters. Pick up a phone and call someone instead of texting them. What Do You Think? Any feedback? I would love to know if people agree or disagree with this. It is a big part of life and some people would agree and some are going to disagree. Feedback on a hub like this will show exactly what this is about. Try not to take any of this the wrong way and see how hard it actually is. Arguments are the worst way of communicating online or in text. You really don’t know if the other person is upset or just stating an opinion. Don’t let Social Networking substitute for your real social life How to cite Social Networking Sites, Papers