Is A Social Networking Service Beneficial For Our Actual Relationship?
Almost 2 million people have the accounts on social media, like Facebook, all over the world. These are enormous numbers. Nowadays, many people spend their time using social networking sites for numerous reasons such as contacting their friends or keeping up with the news. Some people say that the social networking websites negatively impact our lives because people spend too much time using these Social Network Services. In the essay, “You’ve Got to Have (150) Friends” by Robin Dunbar who is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford, he said that people could not allow themselves to have more than about 150 people as friends on their minds. However, he mentioned that there are benefits of people using SNS. For example, the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow people to talk to their friends no matter where they are, and get real-time information about unfolding events. Therefore, I believe that Social Networking Services actually provide benefits for building our relationships.
The first benefit of social networking services is that there are no barriers of distance don’t matter on social networking sites and services. For using SNS’s such as Facebook, people can talk with their friends no matter where they live in the world. It means that it is possible to have conversations with friends who reside in entirely different countries or remote regions. For that reason, it is possible to have global connectivity via the social network. I believe that this is the fastest and easiest way to connect with other people who live in these faraway places. For several networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, individuals have a much easier time making new friends, as well as keeping in touch with old ones, to expand their personnel circle by connecting with many people. For example, by Facebooking, I can have many conversations with my friends who live in different countries all at the same time. With something like face to face chatting, I share my experiences that I’ve gone through in life, and I get to hear them tell me about theirs.
The second benefit of the social networking services is that people can contact their friends without the constraint of time. Using social networking sites allows this sort of action to be accomplished very quickly and with a lot less effort than by other methods. Also, people cannot have conversations with several friends at the same time on other platforms. For these reasons, people have trouble with keeping up with many of their friends and relatives with traditional communications like phone calls. However, since the social networking sites were created, it makes it possible for people to talk to as many others as they want. As a result, people have a greater ability to contact their friends and family and maintain their relationship. Therefore, this was a good influence on the communication of individuals who use the social networking sites for communicating with their friends. For instance, people use an instant messaging application to communicate with other people.
The final benefit of the social networking services is that it enables the sharing of real-time information with their friends. Before social networking was prevalent, the only way to share their real-time information with their friends was interacting face to face. However, for the emergence of the social networking services, people are possible to share the information in real-time with their acquaintances by using instant messaging or social media. Also, people exchange their information in real-time by chatting with each other. Moreover, people post everything that happens around them by using the social networking websites such as face book. People can interact with other people through the posting of key pieces of information on social networks. Therefore, by using instant messaging and posting their situation on social networking page, people can build close relationships with each other.
However, some people insist that social networking sites are not beneficial for our relationships. The biggest reason why they disagree with this argument is that most of the people maintain only about 150 people as their important friends online and offline. The minds of people do not let us make more friends than 150 people. Also, Dunbar told that people can have more friends than 150 people in their social networking sites, but it does not work. Also, people contact with their friends who are same in offline and online.
In contrast, even though people have only about 150 people in social networking sites as friends who are the same in online or in the physical world, social networking helps people keep close links with each other. The number of friends on the SNS is limited, but many people contact with their friends to share their feeling for the social networking. Still social networking services have the good influence on the actual relationship of the public.
The Social Networking Services such as Facebook have benefits for people’s actual relationships. The first reason is the removal of space limitation. Thanks to the invention of social networking, people are easy to contact no matter where they live in. Also, using these SNS’s is the easiest way to improve their relationship with others. The second reason is that people are possible to contact with each other with no limitation of time. Thanks to the social networking services, people can have conversations with many others at the same time. The final reason is that for SNS people can share their experience with others in real time. As people use an instant message and post their situation on the SNS, people have chances to share their experience right away. Therefore, people keep the close relationship with each other. However, some argue that by using SNS people normally have only 150 friends in cyber. Therefore, it does not effect a person’s actual relationships. Otherwise, people have contacts with their friends although the number of friends is only 150. It has influences on their real relationship.
