Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Networks Information Technology

Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Networks Information Technology

Advantages of social networks

Education Field

In the survey conducted by Pew Internet Project’s research, it showed that 67% of online adults use social networks. This data describes the fact that social networks can be used to improve the education of adults and students since they already have certain influence on the learners.

The main advantage is that students can further explore topics that they are interested in by using online social networking since they may have limited resources and time in school. Apart from that, for adults with unique interests, it is not easy to find friends with same interest to chat or discuss with. However, social networks link these people with the ones with same passion, where they can interact with people from different parts of the world.

On the other hand, teachers can take the advantage of students’ social networking abilities to create discussion forums, class blogs and online teaching. Such collaboration between students and teachers, acting social networks as a medium, can help the students gain opportunities to cover knowledge in a wider area and pursue interest.

Schools also use social networks as an intermediate to keep in touch with students. Certain networks such as Facebook, Moodle, Secondlife, Digg and other networks are often used by teachers to connect with students and to hold out-of-classroom discussions.

So, it is quite obvious that several advantages are observed for the impact of social networks on the education field.

Business Field

Social networking takes place online where people meet and share ideas, recommendations and experiences. So, it is similar to a non-stopping communication with a broad audience through a variety of platform or sites. This is one of the factor that the organizations are interested in social media since they can get different kinds of suggestions and feedbacks from people.

Many companies use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to connect with customers and prospective clients. This leads to a golden opportunity for job seekers to learn more about the organization and easily connect with people who work there. Job seekers can become acquainted with the ones working, through these social media, and once they achieve strong presence on these networks, it becomes feasible to reach the people with the authority to hire an employee.

Disadvantages of social networks

Crime

Highlighting the benefits of social networks, it doesn’t necessarily means that there are no drawbacks in them. Recently, online crime which is also known as Cybercrime, proposes an increasing threat to all the internet users. This includes online sexual exploitation and cyber bullying. One of the main problems to eradicate cybercrime is that it is hard to identify the offender and it is almost impossible to keep full-time surveillance in such a wide network.

Online sexual exploitation

One of the most aggressive forms of cybercrime is the online sexual exploitation. This includes sharing pornography, persuading for sex and sex chat. There are over 665000 registered convicted sex offenders in the United States of America, according to a study commissioned by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This means that one in every seven kids has been approached by a sexual predator online. That is 13% of children who use the internet.

Moreover, the Center for Sex Offender Management (CSOM) mentioned that the average sex offender offends for 16 years before he is finally caught. In that life span, he has committed and average of 318 offenses and violated 110 victims. Regarding these data, it can be clearly seen that online sexual exploitation has been destroying the lives of children who use social networks. (Hoffman,2012)

Cyber bullyingCyber
bullying is different from face to face bullying as the bullies cannot be identified easily and they have sense of security that convinces them they won’t get caught. Not knowing the harm that they caused to victim, the bullies do not feel any guilt or empathy.

Cyber bullying is also a form of cybercrime which include different branches. The most common type is called harassment, where the abusive and insulting messages are repeatedly sent to the victim. Other kinds of cyber bullying such as flaming, denigration, impersonation, outing, trickery, and exclusion are also found in the world of social networks. The most crucial way is called cyberstalking which fuel up harassment with significant threats and creates fear.

Please refer to Appendix 4 (p- ) for different forms of cyber bullying.

Addiction to social networks

Social networks, being used as a form of assistant in the field of education, also show negative impacts on students. One of these impacts is addiction to the networks. A survey done by the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media & the Public Affairs (ICMPA) showed that people under the age of 25 have more chance to addict social networks and two-third of the students who use social media have already shown some addiction. Fifty percent of people between the age of 25 and 35, admitted that they are so attached to social networks that they even use them during office hours. Besides, children can also become attached to social media, if there is no parental guidance.