Editorial: Social Networking Issues

 

Social networking is a very popular method of communicating with other individuals in our society today, especially with adolescents and teenagers. Social networking allows us to chat with people across the globe and share special events that occur in our daily lives. It also allows us to learn and exchange knowledge with people too. While this is all well and good, there are also many dangers with social networking as well. Many people are aware of these dangers, but they are careless and end up ignoring them. If not cautious, these dangers can lead to potentially ruined or destroyed lives and once that happens it will be very difficult and almost impossible to recover from.

For example, in the Nobel Medicus Journal there is an article called  “Risk Factors in Victims of Sexual Assaults who acquainted and met with their Perpetrators via SNS.” It was written by Bora Buken that talks about people who fell victim to sexual assaults by complete strangers who they met on the internet, cyber fraud, easy exposure of sexual abuse of children, and other illicit means. These are problems that happen quite a bit when using social media and it is only due to people’s own foolishness and carelessness showing how this can be a very big negative with social networking. Buken himself even feels that if not used properly social media can have harmful effects in people’s lives. “Promoting more and more people to unhealthy ways of living through social networking can have unfavorable conditions in our society”.

Another issue with social networking is that many social media sites are relatively easy access and can be viewed by anyone.  These include, bullies from school, colleges and jobs that one may apply to, and even complete strangers. Due to thoughtless posting, many teens and young adults have gotten into major problems such as having unintended consequences in their lives due to their posts, not being able to enter into a college or career of their choice based on what they post online, and being bullied so aggressively to where they decide to take themselves out of the world and commit suicide. On the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, there is an article written by a man named Jeff Cain called, “Online Social Networking Issues Within Academia and Pharmacy Education” that explains these issues. In it he touches on social media in schools and how it effects students. Cain says that, “Students have been harassed and stalked and have encountered uninvited strangers at home”  She also says, “These abuses at least partially resulted from the availability of personal information on Facebook.” These issues could be avoided much more easily if some people didn’t share so much personal information with a person they just met online.

Now there are some who may disagree with this, saying that meeting new people online can help those who are shy and socially isolated. While this may be somewhat true, the risk value is far too high to do be doing something like this anyway. This is because of how people disguise themselves as someone who is very young when actually they are extremely old. They do this to take advantage of the person who they are in contact with and use them for whatever twisted goals they have in mind. They are online predators who prey on the weak and innocent to claim their victims and once they do there is almost no chance of getting out of it alive. This is why it is wise to always be alert and only socialize with people who can be trusted such as neighbors, good friends, or family relatives. As for those who are shy and quiet, it is most likely due to them being addicted to their social media and not having enough face to face communication with real people. Social media is like the training wheels for socializing. It’s good to start riding out with it for good practice but at some point it has to be given up otherwise it will become a hindrance. 

Finally, social networking sites are prone to hacking or identity theft. This will cause all sorts of problems since the hacker now has access to everything that someone owns. Debit cards, classified information, money etc. all belong to the hacker now and anything that they do to them is done permanently. What is frightening about hacking the most is that it requires very little to no technological skill to do.  The main goal of hackers is to basically use the information that have stolen from you to win over or break the trust of people that you know. This is pretty much one of the main issues that social networking has and it is that it has no built in identification system. This means that there is no possible way to verify if someone is who they say they are. There is an article that talks about this called, “Hacking and Social Networks” and it was written by Dave Roos. In it Roos explains hacking and what hackers do to obtain information from their victims. He says, “Hacking is more of a psychological game. It uses information on personal profiles to win a complete stranger’s trust over.” He also says, “To fight back against social engineering (another term for hacking), the key is awareness. If you know that social engineering hackers exist, you’ll be more careful about what you post on your online profiles. And if you’re familiar with common social engineering scams, you’ll recognize a con when it’s happening instead of when it’s too late.” Now while their not be as many problems with hacking currently compared to before, there is still a good chance for it to happen. It is because people are unaware of the security risks when making a profile page on a social network site. The more interesting and personal information that is posted, the easier it is for a hacker to get to that information and exploit it. This is why it is imperative to make sure that posts do not reveal too much and only contain minor information that the hacker will not need.

Overall while social networking is by no means bad since it has its many positives like being able to chat with people across the planet. sharing special events that occur in our lives, and allowing us to learn and exchange knowledge with people, it can also have a negative impact on our society if not used the proper way. It can range from having our privacy interrupted and stolen, to having very easy access to our profiles and posts, to finally having unforeseen circumstances that risk our health and well-being at stake such as sexual harassment, cyber bullying, and meeting dangerous people. If people do not heed these dangers well, it could lead them to having their lives potentially destroyed and nearly impossible to recover from. It is very simple to avoid these dangers though and to continue enjoying the world of social networking. All they have to do is think before they post.