Social Impact of Communications Technology | Softize

Topics: communication technology, social media impact, social networks impact

Introduction:

Technology has surely revolutionized the world of communication. Social networking sites or social media has made it possible to share interests and connect people across the globe without any geographic, economic or political barriers. Social media services operate as an online platform that can be used to develop social relations with people of interest. The majority of the social networking services are internet based e.g. email, messengers and online communities. These online services provide users means of interaction. Users can share activities, events, interests and ideas with people in their networks. This type of communications technology has made lifestyle innovative and alleviated the distances.

However, besides the numerous advantages there are some disadvantages associated with social networking. It raises many social problems leaving significant impacts on lifestyle and overall performance of the individuals.

Historical Developments:

Initially, attempts were made to develop social networks using online services like Usenet, LISTSERV, ARPANET and BBS (Bulletin Board Services). These services then evolved into America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy with added features and enhancements. There were many other services that somehow served the users as a way to communicate and share (Fraser and Dutta, 2008).

Innovations in communication technology and social media came when Asian Avenue was launched in 1997 with some interesting features. Some people consider it as a prototype of Facebook. But, using this service was fairly complex for non-techies as it involved html coding and designing custom pages. Eventually, developments in communication technology gave birth of the recent sophisticated social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. (Fraser and Dutta, 2008).

Social Impacts:

Social impacts of communication technology or social networking are extensive. Let us take the example of Facebook; it has numerous positive impacts in our social life. Despite general communication, Facebook is extensively being used by scientific communities and research oriented organizations to spread the latest developments in science and technology (Lai and Linda, 2007). Students and teachers are using Facebook as a tool to communicate. As most of the students already use it, teachers have also started to familiarize themselves to maintain an effective and trendy communication. Facebook can also be used as a tool for searching employment opportunities. Social activists use Facebook for grassroots organizing (Dijk, 2006).

There some bad social impacts of Facebook and other social networking sites. According to Dijk (2006), the most commonly discussed issue is about privacy as there is lots of online information about an individual that can be assessed and cause some other issues. Most of the schools and colleges have banned the use of Facebook or any other social networking during school hours as it distracts the student?s attention from studies. Moreover, social networking works like an addiction and users spend most of their time sitting idle in front of computer screen. This has greatly influenced the social aspects of life (Lai and Linda, 2007).

Conclusion:

Social networking has played a great role in shaping the world as a global village. There are various types of services being used these days for community purposes to keep a healthy interaction among the people having common interests. Through time, social media has modified from simple forms of communication to the most advanced social websites that provide momentarily updates about the user activities in a network. However, there are some bad social impacts of using these sites like Facebook during school our office timings. Therefore, educational institutes and offices don?t allow these websites. We have also observed that long sessions of interaction in online communities have influenced the offline lifestyle and users are not well aware of what is going on around their town even. In short, we can conclude that social networking can be useful if used purposefully and it is equally important to maintain an active offline social life.

Source: http://www.softize.net/social-impact-of-communications-technology/

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