Introduction
Social Networking has lately become an extension of our life, interspersing our private space with daily dose of gossips, news and updates. We have become so much addicted to the use of social networks for interacting with friends that living a single day without a peep into Facebook or Twitter seems impossible. LinkedIn, on the other hand, provides a nice platform for enhancing our professional life by expanding our professional network. This essay intends to delve deep into the core of social networking by throwing a light on its history, advantages and disadvantages.
History of Social Networking
Though Facebook has brought about a revolutionary change in the concept of social networking, social networking, however, didn’t start with Facebook. The inception of social networking dates back to 1997 with the launch of SixDegrees.com which first brought the concept of integrating various features available discretely over the internet into a unique platform for interaction with friends and colleagues. But since the use of internet was not a craze that time, number of friends people could add and keep in touch with was less. Further, the additional features were also not great which eventually made SixDegrees.com phase out. After that within few years of each other, an array of social networking websites emerged including Friendster, MySpace and Orkut but none succeeded to hold the attention of people for long until Facebook hit the market and revolutionized social networking.
Impact on Society
Social networking has completely transformed the way we socialize. Before social networking came into the picture, we would keep in touch with friends via letters by post or through email; drop in at a friend’s house and calling friends for a quick chat over the phone. But after the evolution of social networking sites, interacting with friends has become easier than before. Earlier, we could manage to keep in touch only with a handful of friends and colleagues and that too very occasionally. Friends or colleagues living outside the country eventually used to drop out of touch. But now, we can regularly chat and keep updates on our friends and colleagues over Facebook or twitter. Distance is no more a barrier now. It just seems that the entire world is at our fist. Not only in terms of keeping touch, social networking provides a platform for speaking our minds, disseminating ideas and views on various topics.
Advantages
Social networking provides lots of advantages to its users. First and foremost is the interaction with friends and colleagues. Even after leaving the school or college or quitting the job, you can keep in touch with your buddies on a regular basis through social media. Social networks also help one to widen business contacts, network of friends and promote business sites or reputation via advertising. Further, it helps collect views and spread ideas or news. For example, when a girl goes missing before even the police could post her picture everywhere, the girl's friends and family members can share her pic over the net and gather help in finding her.
Disadvantages
Like every good thing, social network too has its downsides. One of the disadvantages of social network is addiction. Since social networking is very addictive, people remain busy building relationships in the virtual world forgetful of the real world. Further, the addiction of playing games or chatting on social media affects the concentration level of students and productivity of the employees. Social network has also become a potent medium for cyber bullying. Incidents of a group of boys or girls targeting a young girl or boy for cyber bullying are not uncommon. In fact, many a time, people wash their dirty linen in public through social media. Social networking sites also intrude our privacy. As we post updates and pictures of our personal life on social media, many a time such updates and photos due to the problem in filtration come open to the public creating a problem in a person's life.
Conclusion
Social networking has deeply integrated into our lives in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and LinkedIn. Spending a single day without checking updates on Facebook seems impossible for many of us. Although Facebook has made the use of social network phenomenal, the concept of social network didn't begin with Facebook. There was an array of social networking sites which came one after another and phased out due to one problem or the other. Social networking with its advantages of keeping in touch with friends and colleagues has lot of disadvantages such as intrusion of privacy, cyber bullying and addiction. Regardless of the downsides, there is no denying the fact that social networking has more advantages than disadvantages.
