Effect of Social Networking on You

"Relationships are supposed to be built on love and a deeper sense of authentic community.It felt with emotions and not emoticons".
The impact of social networking is ever increasing on society and making a huge impact on “You”. Social networking sites, like “Orkut”, “Facebook” and many others are impacting our life, make friends, sharing moments and lots of other things. These virtual platforms deals with the most important aspects of today’s fast moving world, “paucity of Time” and provide us a platform where without hesitation we put our feelings and personal information.
On the other hand, these information are misleading, fake, concocted or half truths. These information are sometime misused and abused like “Morphing of photographs” etc.
We sometimes fall in their trap and even develop the same habits.
In very recent times Dr. Lalit Kishore, wrote in one of his article, “Internet users around the world have glued their eyes on the events unfolding in Iran on their computers like they use to do for television sets earlier but along with their participation through social network sites this time”.
The very recent development in this social networking arena is in the “Introduction of reputation rating”. In the countries like USA, UK, this has already being introduced. A company like eModeration and Reputation Share are introducing the concept of “Reputation rating”.
This is the new era where, the community users will be protected from abusers. This act in two ways: 1. Reputation Share will allow brands to tap into user reputation information. 2. Identify users with positive reputation. The commuters with continuous abusing will receive serious reduced rating. It is a critical step towards safety and security. Reputation Share is a product from LOOKBOTHWAYS who is headed by Linda Criddle a veteran who pioneered in online safety. Tamara Littleton is the CEO of eModeration. The company works with MTV and Nokia. She is pioneered in children online safety topics. This will reward the commuters with positive behaviour and will hold responsible for negative. This will enable users to interact at a safer and socially responsible online environment.
Robert Mackey in one of his blog mentioned that scientist believe that this social networking with extensive use is killing our brain and body. Susan Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University comments that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment and creates attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder among children. The medical practitioners from around the world believe that people who are socially engaged are healthier and quicker to response. The excessive use of texting in mobile phones or wearing earphones is making us socially in e-media but actually taking us away from real world. Kamran Abbasi wrote in the editorial in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, “My enthusiasm for reviving old friendships and retaining newer ones via social networking waned when managing information about other people’s socializing became harder work than my day job”.
Here comes a significant debate whether companies should take steps to block Facebook and Twitter for its employees in the working hours by Chris Crum. USA TODAY pointed out that the employees are distracted from their work and twitting or chatting in Facebook in their office hours. People are becoming unproductive at work.
Nevertheless the effect is huge. Positive or negative, taking brain out of your body or body from brain, protecting us from abusers or becoming more and more unsafe, it is creating and cheating away significant amount of our daily work in many ways and also helping us to forget the real people...and real life.
Sources: 1. http://www.merinews.com/article/impact-of-social-networking-sites-on-social-life/157018.shtml
Sources: 2. http://www.merinews.com/article/web-support-to-iranian-protest/15773549.shtml
Sources:3.http://www.merinews.com/article/online-community-users-now-get-reputation-rating/15774596.shtml.
Sources: 4. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/is-social-networking-killing-you/
Sources: 5. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/22/usatoday-publisher-restricting-employees-from-using-social-networks.