Singapore International School @ Vung Tau

VN230

Kevin Nguyen

0008

Element: Individual Report

Title: How does social networking have an effect on human society?

Introduction

As the world of technology have been developing, more and more people were able to access the internet

all around the globe. According to the internetworldstats compared from march, 2009, the percentage of

people that are able to access to the internet have increased rapidly. Nearly over a decade it has increased

from 23.8% of the population (1,596 million people) to over 56% of the population which is estimated to

4,383 million people. The statistics shows us that the world of internet is slowly but surely taking over the

human population along with new modern technology, used in every aspect of our lives. Using internet

for work and daily life purposes is totally normal for the twenty first century, but the dangerous thing

about this is in how people are exposed to it, and how that may affect everyone around us. In other

words, how does social networking have an effect on human society.

Issue:

Society is where people talk and discuss about their daily lives, but since internet is put out to the world,

this action of human being is slowly fading away. Humans starts looking at their devices such as their

phones, they are attached to it, without caring whatever is happening around their daily society life.

Body:

First thing first, what is social networking? Social networking is an internet platform where people could

digitally communicate online, wherever and whenever humans want to. Social networking can impact the

human society in different ways and many factors must be considered when talking about this. This could
include politics, businesses or even socialisation. All have their pros and cons, and in this particular

report, I will be discussing about these concerns.

Daily life:

During our daily live, social networking have made people feel connected to each other more, as people

are able to express their feelings in calls and text messages online even if the other person is half the

globe away from them. Besides that, we could express our feelings through social media platform

publicly, by sharing, posting and publishing pictures, liking or reacting to others post and commenting on

it. This could make us feel less lonely as there maybe people that might feel or having the same problem

as you on the internet. Students or colleagues could also message each other whenever they want to in a

very fast and efficient ways. For students, they could ask each other how to do work, for business,

colleagues could discuss strategies through call or web conferences. (business2community.com) That is

the beneficial way that social networks impact on the daily lives of human in the society. Opposite from

that are the drawbacks of social networking. From PCworld’s 2017 report, they have stated that: “It is

estimated that there will be 2.67 billion social network users by 2018.”(www.pcworld.idg.com.au) This

could also be shown as over 50% of people using the internet uses social media and networks.

Furthermore, through a research, 90% of teens use social media and over 45% of those teeenagers, have

stated that they use social media almost constantly everyday. Aside from making a modernised society, it

have turned our atmosphere to a space for people to get “stuck” in a digital world. Our daily activities

slowly changes to a picture of people’s eyes attached to the phone monitors and swiping their phones. Not

just teens and adults, parents have affected their children from a very young age, given them with tablets

and phones so they could behave, they could use media such as youtube, or other channels. These made

them grow up thinking that everything they need is on the internet, blocking them from making friends

and socialising (www.cbc.ca) In conclusion these actions from people isolates them from the society,

losing real life communication and socialising skills, not just that, people that are addicted to social media

had a great impact on their health. These health issues include “sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression,

loss in academic studies, work, and anger management issues”, listed from PCworld.
Politics:

Politics in one of the biggest part in the human society, where rules and discussion are brought out. As

technologies are developed, it is also adapted to this particular part of our life. According to a study from

Ohio State University, people from the age of 18 to 24 seem to get their news from social media. Which

could involve political news and updates in their country or the worlds. Social media, in this area, has a

very important purpose for a democratic country throughout the research. It has been brought out in order

for people to vote and elect on what they agree on in their country. For example, in America, social media

is used do that candidates could communicate directly to the election “house”.this is what made social

media act as a very important role in the society, because it gives individuals access to the candidates in

ways that have not always been there before. Besides the fact that social media could gather votes and

information from million of people in the matter of minutes, it also act as a new place for people vote

anonymously and fast.

On the other hand, the research from the ohio university also stated that, participation of people in

elections also need to be depending on their age, each individual’s education, and how often do they use

social media. This made social media isn’t the same as using traditional internet sources for political

information. Further explanation for this is because, as some are more involved in the political world than

others, people only get information about what they are interested in, which means that people that does

not have interest in politics, would not be able to receive news about the election and votes. This created a

huge gap of information in the society, as people are allowed to vote, but do not have a place to elect on.

Over all, social networking helped a lot in this factor of our society, but unfortunately, it still need

improvement in order to let everyone in our community vote fairly as equal as others.

Business and jobs:

These are also one of the biggest factors that stands out in the society that we see everyday. As social

media has changed the way most businesses operate and run on a daily basis, companies have base on
social networking to promote their goods and projects to their customers. Every business need employees,

and how to hire them is also one of the ways that social media could be applied to it.

In a business point of view, they use social media to get real time data from feedbacks of customers in

order to improve the business products, it also makes the sales process more efficient and finally improve

employee productivity as they could work in a modernised workplace, updated with trends on social

media. Moreover social media could help the business to be provided with a fair platform for business of

all sizes to compete, along with giving opportunities for employees to gain leadership.

In an employee point of view, using social media before getting employed into a company is very useful,

it helps them get the knowledge of what that company is requiring and what skills is needed. This give

everyone a better chance of getting a suitable job. Moreover after getting employed, they would be able to

be creative on the social media.

The drawbacks of social media is never the less severe. If the business is completely based on social

media, the company will need to consider a solution for this big rick. This is, ‘views’. This is a thing

where the business could track how many people are interested and are paying attention to the company’s

product. Is these numbers are below average and in a limited amount, the business could lose all their

credibility. Along with that social media is a place of a large discussion, so there will be bad and hatred

comments which causes the business to lose customers trust.

But what does this change in our society? From business improvement and updates in trend, they are able

to transfer great amount of information to the society, giving people more chance to get a better view of

the business and their future workplace.

The moral challenges:

Finally the most important factor in the society is the way that social networks affect the way people feel

and behave. Social media and network doesn’t simply has its good side, but in fact it is blamed for things

that dangerously affect on the mental health and lives of the human being, this could be listed as, suicidal,

anti social, depression and other bad “social illness”

First things first, is cyber bullying, the biggest moral challenges of social networks in the society.

Teenagers these days are one of the biggest users in social media, so there will be a “need for fame”

situation, where some wants to be better than each other, more famous as they said in Simplylearn, or in

social media terms, more followers, more likes, more hearts. This made them more and more addicted to

social media. How may this relate to cyberbullying? This is one of the reason that causes bullying on the

internet, because the people with more fame, or more popular, would likely to compare, discriminate,

shame the others that are less famous. They simply says hatred words, shaming others insecurities like

words such as, fat, short, ugly, weird,...this caused the person that was bullied at scared of the society and

socialise. In fact, because the population of internet users increase the number of people that get cyber

bullied seem to increase along with it. This also led to the increase in people with depression, antisocial

and even led to increase of death due to suicides. Beside cyber bullying, i would want to also talk about

the lack of privacy on social medias and networks. People are too exposed to the internet, of course some

of them will have some accidents of posting something they did not want to. As one of the most popular

quote for social media, “once it’s on the internet, it is there forever.” so as the quote stated that, once you

post something on the internet that is bad or offending, you will literally ruin your life, reputation and

even losing your job.

Conclusion:

Overall, despite the fact that social media is a great place for large discussions for people around the

world, once again, nothing is completely bad or completely good, depending on different peoples

perspectives. Social media definitely will be very big in the future, so if there is a solution, i would

suggest educating people in schools better and teach them how to obtain and limit yourself on the world

of internet, and make sure we still get to stay in the natural human society, where people talk to each other

in real life, rather than, stuck in a digital world.

Word count: 1832

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