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Find Out The Impact of Social Networking
Here we continue with the second part of our blog on social networking. Those who have missed our first blog can read it from Here. It will help to connect with the second part of the blog discussing about impact of social networking in our life. Let us explore the blog to find out in more details. Web-based social networking services make it possible to connect people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders. Through e-mail and instant messaging, online communities are created where a gift economy and reciprocal altruism are encouraged through cooperation. Information is suited to a gift economy, as information is a non-rival good and can be gifted at practically no cost. Scholars have noted that the term "social" cannot account for technological features of the social network platforms alone. Hence, the level of network sociability should determine by the actual performances of its users. According to the communication theory of uses and gratifications, an increasing number of individuals are looking to the internet and social media to fulfill cognitive, effective, personal integrative, social integrative, and tension free needs. With Internet technology as a supplement to fulfill needs, it is in turn affecting everyday life, including relationships, school, church, entertainment, and family. Companies are using social media as a way to learn about potential employees' personalities and behavior. In numerous situations a candidate who might otherwise have been hired has been rejected due to offensive or otherwise unseemly photos or comments posted to social networks or appearing on a news feed. Facebook and other social networking tools are increasingly the aim of scholarly research. Scholars in many fields have begun to investigate the impact of social networking sites, investigating how such sites may play into issues of identity, privacy, social capital, youth culture, and education. Research has also suggested that individuals add offline friends on Facebook to maintain contact and often this blurs the lines between work and home lives. According to a study in 2015, 63% of the users of Facebook or Twitter in the USA consider these networks to be their main source of news, with entertainment news being the most seen. In the times of breaking news, Twitter users are more likely to stay invested in the story. In some cases when the news story is more political, users may be more likely to voice their opinion on a linked Facebook story with a comment or like, while Twitter users will just follow the sites feed and/ or retweet the article.
A 2015 study shows that 85% of people aged 18 to 34 use social networking sites for their purchase decision making. While over 65% of people aged 55 and over rely on word of mouth. Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for philanthropy. Such models provide a means for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested users. Social networks are providing a different way for individuals to communicate digitally. These communities of hypertext allow for the sharing of information and ideas, an old concept placed in a digital environment. In 2011, HCL Technologies conducted research that showed that 50% of British employers had banned the use of social networking sites/services during office hours. Research has provided us with mixed results as to whether or not a person's involvement in social networking can affect their feelings of loneliness. Studies have indicated that how a person chooses to use social networking can change their feelings of loneliness in either a negative or positive way. Some companies with mobile workers have encouraged their workers to use social networking to feel connected, educators are using it to keep connected with their students and individuals are benefiting from social networking to keep connect with already close relationships that they've developed under circumstances that would otherwise make it difficult to do so. Each social networking user is able to create a community that centres around a personal identity they choose to create online. In his book Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self, Rob Cover argues that social networking's foundation in Web 2.0, high-speed networking shifts online representation to one which is both visual and relational to other people, complexing the identity process for younger people and creating new forms of anxiety. In 2016, news reports stated that excessive usage of social networking sites sites may be associated with an increase in the rates of depression, to almost triple the rate for non-social networking users. Experts worldwide have said that 2030 people who use social networking sites more have higher levels of depression than those who use social networking sites less. At least one study went as far as to conclude that the negative effects of Facebook usage are equal to or greater than the positive effects of face-to-face interactions.
According to a recent article from Computers in Human Behavior, Facebook has also been shown to lead to issues of social comparison. Users are able to select which photos and status updates to post, allowing them to portray their lives in acclamatory manners. These updates can lead to other users feeling like their lives are inferior by comparison. Users may feel especially inclined to compare themselves to other users with whom they share similar characteristics or lifestyles, leading to a fairer comparison. Motives for these comparisons can be associated with the goals of improving oneself by looking at profiles of people who one feels are superior, especially when their lifestyle is similar and possible. One can also self-compare to make oneself feel superior to others by looking at the profiles of users who one believes to be worse off. However, a study by the Harvard Business Review shows that these goals often lead to negative consequences, as use of Facebook has been linked with lower levels of well-being; mental health has been shown to decrease due to the use of Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior emphasizes that these feelings of poor mental health have been suggested to cause people to take time off from their Facebook accounts; this action is called “Facebook Fatigue” and has been common in recent years.
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