Social Networking: Benefits and disadvantages

The world is changing and it is changing at a very intense pace. Nobody these days can say that our society of today’s world is the same as it was 20 years ago. Not that long time ago we could’ve said that technology changes our society, but now the society is demanding a change in technology. New Media created new ways of communication, entertainment, advertising, education, etc. Social Networking enables us to communicate with anyone and anywhere. People of all ages, races and classes, which have access to new media technology, are empowered to communicate with anyone they want. This instant and low cost communication also changed our society by simply making it global. Teenagers and children spend enormous amount of time on Internet, they learn a lot by communicating with others and at the same time miss out on real life communication. There is simply no need of real life interaction, since all of that is moved online. New Media have changed distribution of information and coordination and it certainly does make our lives better with faster, cheaper and easier technology, but does it make our lives safer. The main issue that concerns everyone or at least most of new media users is the privacy issue. With all the information which we provide on the web site it is hard to protect yourself from that information being used by someone else.

Effects on society

Positive

• Communication with anyone and anywhere in a much more timely fashion
• Meet new people, make new connections
• Interaction with groups of same interest
• New way of information and knowledge distribution
• Builds self-esteem
• New way and sometimes the only way to communicate for disabled people
• Has many benefits if looked from business perspective
• Potential to Grow and Improve

Negative

• Purposeful loss of privacy
• Very small control over information flow that may affect your privacy
• Ability for someone to use the information about you that may have effect on you
• Increased movement of social interactions from the physical domain to the digital domain
• Unprotected communication which may harm individuals
• Can easily used unethically

From moral and Ethical perspective I believe we have to do more improvement in educating people. As of right now people don’t understand what impact they may do on others by using social networks. People create false identities or communicate anonymous and believe since no one knows who they are, they can do anything they want. This may have a negative impact on others and this should be educated to children and teenagers since they growing up as a social media natives.

Of course, all that information provided in social network is the information that we want people to know and there should be no debate over this since it is up to us to give it out. But what if the information we want our friends to know will be also viewed by your coworkers or classmates and the information you wanted to keep out is now available to them. Many people don’t like to combine work with personal life, but now it’s almost impossible with social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. One of the important disadvantages is that these social networking sites may result in loss of your job or not being hired. As we all know companies are beginning to research as much information as possible about their employees or about people that apply for a job. Therefore, information that you thought will be viewed by your friends will be also available to others. And, the most important disadvantage is the inability to control communication of children and teenagers in these social network sites. These sites may have a mental impact on a person, for example which can lead to suicide like it happened to 13 year old girl Megan Meier. She committed suicide after she was emotionally hurt by a false created identity of a boy. Also, unprotected communication may result in use of social networks by criminals, such as pedophiles, stalkers, etc. According to vermontcynic.com the stalking rates raise nationally and big part of it done through new media technology. And, even though we can’t prevent stalkers to use social networking sites we can prevent sexual offenders to do that. Number of states banned registered sex offenders from registering the sites, but what about unregistered sex offenders. Therefore, more has to be done in order to prevent of that information to be used.

There are also a large number of positive aspects from social networking sites. From the sociological perspective social networks will have a positive effect on the society. It makes our society globalized since everyone who has connection to new media technology is able to communicate with anyone they want. This gives us an opportunity to learn about different cultures, religion and different societies.

The main reason social networking websites were created is to be in touch with your friends or family and stay connected with them no matter how far they are. But, it also allowed people to make new connections with people you never met. Whether it is the friend of you friend, someone you heard about or someone who has the same interest or hobby as you do, you can speak to them no matter where they are. And, this sort of interaction only benefits our society since it creates new ways of information and knowledge distribution. Also, when you interact with people in the cyber world it may also help you to do so in the real world for example by speaking to people online at first. This could help teenagers by building their self-esteem and confidence. In addition to, one of the most important benefits brought by the social networking is ability for disabled people to interact with the rest of the world. For many individuals this may be the only way they can speak and make friends.

Those are the main positive aspects, but there are also a lot of others like for example if we look at it from economic perspective. Social networking opens new opportunities, new market, new tool of advertisement, new way to gather information about customers and new way of recruiting. As I said before companies use social networking to find out about potential employees, but they also use that tool to look for new employees. This can benefit you if you are offered a better job and you did not even look for it. By new market I mean that there is an opportunity to use social networking sites to sell products or services. For example like it is done by Mars on Facebook, which gives its users an option to send candy’s to their friends as a gift. This way they can profit and at the same time advertise. And speaking of advertisement, the amount of people using social networking and number of times they visit it per day is extraordinary high. According to www.belanger.wordpress.com the total amount of users of social networking sites is seventy percent of total amount of audience on internet. Therefore, this is a great tool for advertisement and one of the examples is a low budget movie “300” that came out in March of 2007. MySpace was one of the main tools which were used to advertise the movie and as a result it made six times more than spent on the movie. Also, it is a very good tool to gather information about customers and react to customer demands more quickly, which can only benefit company’s and customers.

Therefore, since the growth of social networking sites doesn’t stop and in fact keeps increasing, we should think of what other benefits can it bring to us. Whether we are looking at the economical, sociological, ethical or other ways, we can all benefit from them. But, the best part of social networking is the fact that it is something new to our society and we can improve on its negative aspects.

National Issue

I decided to write about the national issue of the United States since it is something that concerns me. I am a part of young generation and a student that will enter the “real life” after graduating Baruch College. United States is an amazing country with great history, many opportunities for individuals. It is a country that has very big influence on the world in every way. Therefore, America is often referred to as the “world police”. At least ten years ago it was a country with the top standard of living in the world, and the currency that was the “king of all the currencies on Earth”. Unfortunately, things are not the same like they were ten years ago. Certainly, United States is still considered the major economic power of the world, but there are too many changes that may shift us from this high position. That is why I believe it should be a major concern for every individual who lives in United States, especially young generation, since our future will depend on these changes.

After the World War Two, changes in technology had a major impact on the economy of United States. It became one of the most advanced countries in technology and heavy machinery. Mostly because of increased production, which was driven by the demand of European countries after devastating war. This progress helped to improve infrastructure, education, made U.S. dollar very strong and basically made United States first economic power of the world.

Over the past thirty years the world’s economy moved towards globalization of markets and production, but with it the society of United States changed too. We live in the society where “everything should be done today if not yesterday” and I believe it is a big disadvantage, which may have a negative impact on our future. Great example of such failure would be “bullet train”, which was invented in the United States. This new creation was supposed to become a big breakthrough in transportation by cutting the travel time more than in half. However, due to the high cost and the extended time for establishment this invention was denied. Therefore, countries like Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, etc. are way ahead of the United States when it comes to transportation. This factor is very important in global business. With technology we have in this world Americans should be able to improve our transportation and infrastructure. Unfortunately, our government and society do almost nothing to make our future better. As a result, we see no changes in improvement of bridges and tunnels, which are starting to collapse as we have seen from the news.

In addition, American citizens are famous for inefficient use of energy and income. The country of the United States, with population of almost three hundred million of people which is about 4 percent of the worlds population consumes thirty percent of the world energy supply if not more. This fact is very frightening, especially since the cost of energy continues to increase. However, when comparing the prices of the other developed countries, the costs of energy in the U.S. are still very low. When it comes to savings, citizens of other major economic countries, like Japan, have an average of little more than seventeen percent of saved income. This number is an absolute opposite of ours since it is a negative percentage. We are the biggest spenders in the world. At the same time, an average American consumer has eight thousand dollars in debt, which is a very big number when compared to the rest of the world.

I believe that the biggest concern for us should be education because it has a very big influence on our civilization. United States spends the most money on kindergarten through twelve grade schools than anyone in the world. However, American students do not get a better education than other countries. For example, Singapore, which is developing country, was ranked ahead of United States in educational level in mathematics between high school students. This statistic shows that something has to be done in our educational system. Bill Gates, entrepreneur and the richest man in the world hires the Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science from China for his corporation. The reason for that was because there are not enough of them in United States. He also appeared number of times before the Congress requesting to raise the number of H-1B visas for foreign professionals. The demand for them is growing, but the number of Americans graduating with degree like science, technology, engineering and mathematics is falling. The Labor Department projects that by two thousand fourteen there will be more than two million jobs openings in these fields. This change may cause us falling behind in the competitive world. In order to prevent such disaster from happening, the government has to improve educational system and increase the interest of young generation in needed fields.

As you can see, everything I described along with the examples I’ve provided in this essay is not something new. Also, I think that most of people are aware of them. Unfortunately, the government and citizens of the United States do not do anything that may turn around these changes into benefits for us. We steel use as much electricity as we want, we still burn oil to heat our houses, we still drive big cars that burn enormous amount of gas, we still buy everything we want by paying with credit cards or taking a loan, and we still believe that school programs are too hard and should be easier for our children. Everything that we do is done to satisfy us today; however, we have to start thinking about our long term satisfaction. Actually, we should stop being selfish and think of our next generation, think about our kids. What would they say when they will face the consequences of our actions. I believe that these issues should concern young generation the most. We are the ones that decide our own future. Whether you want to live in the country which is dependent on oil from Middle Eastern countries and finance organizations that support terrorist groups that we keep fighting against, or be a county which produces most of its energy supply. Or, maybe you want to live in a country which once was the number one economy in the world, but because it failed to keep up with the rest of the world now only able to look in history books and talk of how great it once was. In my opinion, American standard of living should be first in the world like it was ten years ago, but not at expense of our planet like it was back then and now.

And yes, it all comes down to our planet. Our planet has to be a number one priority no matter what it takes. If you are twenty years old or more you had to see a change in climate over years of your life. I have lived in the country which had so much snow in the winter that you wouldn’t be able to walk through it, but now it’s not even close to that. Summers were so nice and warm that you can spend all day outside, but now you can’t go outside because it is too hot and conditioner is your life saver. Well, didn’t you hear people say “don’t mess with mother nature”? I say that to you if you want your kids live on this planet and enjoy beauty of nature like we do. However, if we will continue taking all the resources out of our planet and give nothing in return we will soon end up asking ourselves “What have we done?”.

I got scared when I read the news that the President of Maldive Islands is looking for the land elsewhere for its people because Atlas will soon be renewed, but with less islands on it. If this does not frightens you, than you are the person that will destroy our planet. You will continue drive your big and luxury cars with big engines, and enjoy your life as long as you are comfortable. Well nothing is forever and soon we will start running out of oil and the prices will keep rising. Therefore, if you don’t care about the nature, than you should think about your wallet. May be than you will change your mind and think of these issues, but it could be too late.

“We should look at it not as the national issue, but as the global issue. So, Let’s Do Something!!!!!!”

Liverpool FC

The "REDS". Yes we are Liverpool FC fans and we are the reds. I decided to write this as my first posting on my blog because as you can see I am Liverpool's fan. I am Ukrainian and as almost everyone in Europe love the number one sport "Football". I became Liverpool's fan in 2004 since i came to New York. I always wanted to visit Liverpool and go to one of their games, but so far it didn't work out because of work and school. However, always try to watch all their games, of course, at the bar. So if anyone knows in NY a good bar full of Liverpool fans let me know.