The Social Impact Of Voluntary Abstention From Social Networking Sites

This week, specifically today, begins my abstinence from social media. For the purpose of this class project, I am giving up Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I began by deleting the apps from my iPhone, which is normally where I check in throughout my day. There was little, if any, anxiety in deleting those apps. Last night I thought that this would be a walk in the park.

Dan Fletcher’s conclusion is that he wants us, the reader to stop using social networks. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, invented Facebook in his dorm for Ivy League students to keep in touch. Fletcher makes an excellent metaphor comparing the employees for Zuckerberg, who work without cubicles or walls to Facebook’s profiles saying there’s no privacy. Fletcher focuses on Facebook’s privacy policies and how fast they have expanded and the money they have made. He says that Facebook is constantly changing their privacy policies, where he goes in details of all the changes they have done over the years. Zuckerberg’s idea for Facebook is for the world to be open and

The small space users are given to display their content free of charge (e.g., Facebook timeline) can be viewed advertising space that Facebook’s clients can use, which helps the company (Facebook) and its capitalistic partners make a profit at the expense of users. In exchange for the advertising space Facebook creates for their partners/clients, users are given an alternative for communicating with friends and loved ones, sharing their life events, and staying updated with things they have an interest in (e.g., favorite soccer team). In this sense, the millions of Facebook users are seen as another tool for creating surplus value (revenue). Facebook benefits from their users being active on their site because more opportunities are created that can benefit Facebook’s clients, which results in more alienation as most users are not guaranteed a return on their investment in Facebook (activity). Users constant activity on the site ensures that Facebook’s partners will have more people they can market their products to. Every update is organized so that Facebook’s clients are able to tap into different populations easier and more efficiently. In this sense, companies that purchase rights to advertise their products are the capitalist class that through Facebook are able to profit at the expense of the proletariat (users).

The ownership of social profiles, brings about having an amount of these users known as “followers.” Having large amounts of these “followers” has brought some users to believe that they have all the attention that they need. Although, having thousands of followers does not guarantee anything. These listeners or “followers” are not really there, in fact, they aren’t. America’s technology has led people to believe that this gap of crave for attention is being fulfilled. It has been proven that the drive fo. It makes us feel like we have companions or rather people that is there to hear us. It is as if these “followers” understand us and know that we crave this attention by dropping a “like” and sometimes taking the time to leave a comment. The reality is, it is as if there is always someone online to like a Facebook status or to favorite a tweet. These online interactions makes people forget how to socialize in the real world and bring upon social changes and eventually it leads to loneliness. This tragic idea is the result of the internet having your full attention but not your surroundings and the real world you are living in. In fact, back before the television was a big deal, entrepreneurs and big corporations believed it was a terrible idea as Americans would not have time to sit in front of a television to watch their time away. Now, televisions are almost in every home in America and real life is not being lived as these people prefer watching these television shows rather than going out and interacting with others. It has eventually brought a crisis upon us that can be avoided by using your devices and technology with a certain limit. This can also be changed by actually interacting with people face to be face rather than on a group chat which could help one work on social skills rather than other

As an outcome of the new technological innovations, many people have turned to more convenient and virtual means of developing relationships as opposed to tangible and more meaningful ones, and this is harmful as it can erode the possibility of contributing personal views to society in an effective way. Social media is a rather broad platform, and within it, lies a myriad of websites that would allow for individuals to communicate ideas, for example, through Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and many more alike. And while convenient communication may have its benefits, it is safe to argue that the consequences may outweigh them. For instance, the detriments of not maintaining physical relationships can be seen in Scott Brown’s Facebook Friendonomics, where the author notes that “people have become mere collectibles” due to the increasing dependence on social media as a mean of forming social relationships (2). This is significant because it evident the ways in which dependency on social media can be hindering in both, in maintaining a sense of individualism, for example because what is presented on social media might not always be accurate, and in contributing to society, because the relationships or ‘friends,’ that many people seem to have on Facebook, cannot truly be

Jessica Rosenberg’s article, “Is Facebook making us lonely?” finds how us, while enjoying the convenience that Facebook brings to us, we feel “lonely” after overusing it. Probably, Facebook is a central reason that people are discordant in communication with each other, while the initial objective of Facebook is making collaboration. Rosenberg suggests that she has “over 900 people I’m ‘friends’ with on Facebook”, albeit she felt “miss those deeper conversations” and miss “knowing more”. Moreover, she felt the distance between “friends” are prolonged and “Facebook gives us a false sense of connection and friendship.” Essentially, Facebook is bringing us down and slowly scatter our world into pieces. Perhaps, even the most gregarious people

Journalist, Farhad Manjoo, in his article, “You Have No Friends,” emphasizes the social and networking benefits Facebook has to offer. Manjoo’s purpose is to convince people that have not joined the networking giant that the benefits of joining Facebook outweigh the arguments to avoid it. He adopts a cogent tone in order address any concerns of the Facebook holdouts.

A world where technology, the Internet, and social networking websites do not exist is an unspeakable, if not an impossible theory in the minds of today’s generation. The Internet, for example, has allowed for people to live a life that is fast and easy. A life that is more accurate and efficient in terms of knowledge and direction. A question that one might have can be answered instantly with the help of the well-known Google search engine. An address of a company or business can be found within a minute with either Google Maps or Apple Maps. With just a click of a mouse and a touch of finger, technology and the Internet can make life easy. Social networking websites have also made a positive impact in the lives of many, both professionally and personally. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become very popular, especially in the up and coming generations. These social networking websites are online places “where [users] can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to others,” (Lenhart and Madden, 2006). It has allowed users to be connected and stay connected by building relationships in a business aspect and a personal aspect. It also serves as a means of communication and networking. Although social networking websites have had a positive impact on the lives of many, it has also had a negative impact, especially in terms of multiple privacy

Nevertheless, the Internet opens new ways to investigate in social and behavioural sciences because there are many scientific questions about some target population that do not look for generalised results but representative ones. As many scholars recognise, the Internet provides new opportunities for non-random survey data (Couper, 2000; Fricker and Schonlau, 2002). In particular, these authors distinguish the advantages of the Internet to capture the “hard to reach”/“hard to involve” population. In fact, this paper proposes to analyze if social networking sites (SNSs), specifically the Facebook network site, can help researchers to contact hidden or hard to reach persons. Although in the last decade researchers became interested in the study of SNSs, they particularly focus on the characteristics of the users of SNSs (Back et al., 2010), on the analysis of the social capital and their influence in users behaviour (Ellison et al., 2007; Bigge, 2006) or on ethical issues concerning with the reward of private information on the Internet (Acquisti and Gross, 2006; Boyd and Ellison, 2008; Boyd, 2008; Boyd and Hargittai, 2010). But until now it has not been common to exploit SNSs as a research tool (Brickman-Bhutta, 2009). Boyd and Ellison (2008, p. 1) define SNSs as “web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public

One may choose to be a part of the social networking wave in this ‘digital era’ or may chose to distance themselves from this phenomenon, but there is no denying the impact of social

In the present time, people are globally connected through the digital frontier. They are able to communicate directly with each other in seconds. Sometimes, they do it on their smart phones. Sometimes, they go on the computer. Nonetheless, technology’s growth over time has allowed society easier access to information and interaction. Social media platforms have revolutionized modern communication. Facebook possesses a network economy, in which it contains a positive correlation between amount of users and significance. Users benefit as more people connect to the platform. As of March 31, 2016, Facebook has maintained at least 1.65 billion active users monthly (Company Info | Facebook Newsroom). The plethora of users and information given out on

The twenty-first century has been graced by a tremendous and revolutionary growth of information technology. Beginning with the invention of the internet and now social networks, connection and collaboration of individuals and groups has been made easier by the availability of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Myspace and the like. These platforms have rendered the power of expression, interaction and collaboration to the people. By so doing, individuals can now freely interact and pursue various causes. As people interact through the social networks their individual social behaviour tends to be shaped by these interactions. The impacts of social networking can be characterised as both positive and negative. This essay focuses on the impacts of social networking on individual wellbeing in a bid to recommend that indeed, there is a need for government control of social networks.

Social Networking sites are a web-based service that gives an opportunity to individuals to create their own personal profile with the choice of their own selected content. People spend more than usual hours on social networking sites to post pictures, browse through updates seek entertainment and chat around with friends to keep themselves connected to one another. These sites have held an addiction to the youth where some find it difficult to concentrate on their work and prefer logging in and jumping across one site to another. Individuals have set their own limits as to when and when not to access these websites but we witness very few out of the lot who does not access or make use of these sites at all.

Facebook is an online social networking platform and a for-profit corporation that was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. It allows people to maintain and establish social relationships by generating personal profiles, where they are able to upload pictures, text, videos, music, and add others to their friend list. Users are able to post statuses and comments to their friends and on their own profile pages, sharing and liking certain content through the influence of Facebook’s social occurence. This can be attributed to advertisers who are seeking additional information about the consumer with the aim to target a certain demographic, to increase profit. The more users, the more profit for Facebook, as well as organising careful financial

Facebook is a popular social networking website that connects and updates families, friends, and colleagues. This site was supposed to have a positive impact on our lives, however, it also came with consequences. Facebook has caused our lack of ability to communicate and connect with others. This type of social media site has been an integrated part of most people’s life especially the young adults. Facebook has affected the divorce rate for married couples, cyberbullying for young adults, our mental health, and dangerous outcomes for posting personal information.