EQ- Are social networking sites good for our society?
BACKGROUND: Many people believe that social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter have a lot to contribute to society in various ways such as providing easier communication for people around the world to communicate with one another, or that they provide companies with an outlet to help get the word out about their product thus helping the economy. While others think that the benefits that the addition of social media to society are outweighed by the dangers of the online world with sexual predators looking for naïve children, criminals recruiting members and hacking peoples accounts to steal somebody’s identity, even some terrorist groups watch their newsfeeds for any hint of movements of troops or cargo and plan an attack.
CLAIM: Although social networking sites provide an easier medium to use when trying to communicate with friends and family, they pose a serious threat to society by exposing children to online predators, they give criminals a chance to increase their numbers, and even in some cases expose those who fight for our freedoms to terrorist threats that may result in death making said sites more detrimental than beneficial to our society.
SUPPORT: “Everything Soldiers and family members share, including birth dates, vacation photos and even their exact geographical location, can be logged by Facebook applications and then accessed by hackers, identity thieves, and advertisers. For Soldiers, government employees, and civilian contractors, the information shared on Facebook can not only endanger personal privacy, it can put operations security at risk and endanger the lives of service members at home and abroad.”(“Facebook: Please use responsibly” By Ashley Fowler ( http://www.army.mil/article/72387/ )
EQ- Are social networking sites good for our society? (Kenneth)
Filed under Controversial Issue #1
reneschofield-AP BLOG 
Your support and claim is very strong
REGINAE: You need to support, challenge, or qualify the writer’s claims with your own NEW claims, evidence and reasoning to earn full credit for Blog Comments.
Thank you! Sometimes we are so blinded by the benefits of something that we neglect the disadvantages, and in that blindness grave mistakes may occur.
I personally agree with your claim and I believe that, with so many online networks, a person’s social skills are slowly being deprived. Many who use social networks as a social medium tend to have low social skills when it comes to face-to-face interactions.
I completely agree. Through the use of social networking sites many of the members of the newer generation is significantly lacking people skills and this may cause there to be problems in our work force because if the occasion arises and they need to work together they will be lacking the proper skills to communicate, eventually causing them to find little success in that task when it comes to performing it away from the monitor.
An interesting post from a Edutopia site dedicated to learning in virtual platforms suggests our next directions will be to develop online courses with avatars to teach students how to communicate face to face with other students, with teachers, with employers and customers. It’s an interesting premise…leap forward with technology, only to discover the need for retraining basic human communication skills: speaking, listening, nonverbal expression, etc. Can a balance be found and maintained that both advances human intellect AND strengthens social interaction? your thoughts?
I not only agree with you Kenneth, but I am going to add another point. In today’s society because everything in online, employers are able to do background checks on people they could potentially hire. Social networking sites are always checked. The slightest thing on one’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. could cost them their potential job. “Job recruiters reported negative reactions to finding profanity (61%), poor spelling or grammar (54%), illegal drugs (78%), sexual content (66%), pictures of or with alcohol (47%), and religious content (26%) on potential employees’ social media pages.” (Jobvite, “2012 Social Job Seeker Survey,” http://www.jobvite.com, 2012) Social networking sites can be harmful in many ways. As Kenneth said, crimes can be committed, classified information leaked, and threats can be made, plus job issues — social networking sites harm our society.
Social networks such as Facebook played a signifcant role in the revolts that occured in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria.
In addition social networking sites play an important role in organizing American polical parties and in reaching out to voters.
Ms. Schofield, I have never heard of this new system of teaching people how to interact with other humans, but it is indeed interesting. I believe that this new system would not solve the problem because it is still using an avatar that will have programmed responces. Humans are very unpredictable, and no mere online course will be able to mimic that social interaction and prepare the student for real life situations.
quite true, Kenneth! It seems very odd indeed that we would create technical means to manage a distinctly human interaction.
You make some very excellent arguments that are very hard to argue agianst, so i won’t. I will say, however, that the true danger of Facebook is it allows the stupidity of people to be exposed to everyone and allows those stupid people to be taken advantage of. With hackers, our society, no matter what, will continue to orbit around computers. Hackers will always be there to hack computers and gain information.