Are Social Networking Sites Harmful or Safe Research Paper

Are Social Networking Sites Harmful or unspoiled - Research Paper Example2. Social Networking Sites Safe or Not? McDowell and Morda include alarming statistics that cotton up the level of integration of sociable networking sites there are around 500 million users on Facebook and much than 100 million users on MySpace around the globe (1). The accumulation of such(prenominal) an extravagant population of the introduction on centralized platforms has brought closely numerous issues related to privacy and security of the social networking users. The presence of such an extensive population of the world includes all types of users, such as criminals, hackers etc. Earlier, internet users were sensitive about the safeguarding of their information and details about their lives, however, the advent of social networking sites has brought about a sudden trend resulting in influx of respective(prenominal)ised information and news about ones daily lives on the respective(prenominal) platf orms. Users generally follow the on-going trend and post details about their routines and lives on such sites while be unconscious of the possible consequences of such conduct. Livingstone and David stated teenagers tend to reveal their personal information more than others since 49% of the teenagers in US disclose their school names and 29% provide their email addresses (6). McDowell and Morda stated that level information about upcoming trips, childrens school information and names can give the malevolent intent users information that might prove to harm the users and bring about dangerous instances for them, for example, robbery, kidnapping etc (3). rough may argue that social networking sites can prove to be safer and dangerous instances can be avoided if personal details of such nature are not shared on the platform. However, McDowell and Morda stated that the privacy of an individual is even threatened when others post information regarding others, intentionally or uninten tionally, and alike that such posting is beyond the control of any individual (3). Livingstone and Brake included figures regarding the degree of inclusion of youngsters on social networking sites and revealed that closely half of the youngsters in UK between the ages of 8 and 17 possess a social networking profile (2). mistakable figures have been recorded for USA as well. The presence of such fragile and young minds on social networking sites is not safe since the content on these platforms may be inappropriate for the young viewers. Livingstone and Brake also revealed that 57% of youngsters had been exposed to pornography and 31% of them had seen violent content on social networking sites (5). Alongside the film to inappropriate content, social networking sites have given newer platforms for bullying their peers. Livingstone and Brake included results from a survey that included 12-17 year old participants in the survey. The survey revealed that children were being bullied al most as much online as their genuinely lives since 72% children were being bullied online and 85% were being bullied in school (6). It is argued that cyber bulling on social networking sites is not as bad as it has been portrayed since it is only a verbal attack on the victim, rather than a physical one (