The Positive And Negative Impact

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

What Is Social Networking? 

Social Networking. . . It's the way the 21st century communicates today. Want to know what it really means?

A locality division, if you will or social networking is the group of humans into explicit groupings, like small rural communities.

This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences.

When it comes to online social networking, websites are generally used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users.

In the first decade of the 21st century, new media engineering’s for social networking such as face book, my space, twitter and you tube began to transform the social, how human beings begin and maintain practically every type of ethically significant social bond or role: friend-to-friend, parent-to-child, co-worker-to co-worker, employer-to-employee, teacher-to-student, neighbor-to-neighbor, seller-to-buyer, and doctor-to-patient, to affectionate just a influenced list.(LEBLANC 2011)

Human beings have been socially ‘networked’ in one conduct or another for as long as we have been on the planet, and humans have conventionally availed themselves of many sequential techniques and instruments for simplifying and maintaining such networks. (LEBLANC 2011) These include well thought-out social affiliations and institutions such as private and public clubs, lodges and churches as well as communications technologies such as postal and courier systems, telegraphs and telephones.

The positive and negative impact in social networking

Apart from the social compensation, social networking sites can be used to document school research. They provide a way to interact with others who share the same interests and to get constructive feedback on ongoing projects.

Along with these benefits come some risks. Most social networking sites are open to all, especially MySpace, which means that your teen could be possibly exposed to harassment, bullying or sexual advances.

Cyber-bullying and harassment are most often common by other teens and tend to happen most to older girls and to teens of either gender who have a strong online presence. (KITE 2011)

It may take several forms:

delivering private instant messages, text messages or e-mails

publishing threatening messages

uploading photos that will cause humiliation

spreading rumors is the most common

It's rare for irritation to spill over into real-world conflicts, but it can still be a cause of emotional distress for teens.

A greater danger is that teens may become targets of pedophiles. The privacy of some social networking sites makes it easy for immoral people to target young teens and engage them in harmful conversations. It's easy for predators to pose as teens and tempt children into harmful real-world contact as well. (KITE 2011) Most social networking sites have privacy controls in place, but teens hardly ever use them. Active monitoring of profiles and behaviors catches some predators, but not all of them.

Another risk is identity theft, which can occur when teens share too much information about their name, date of birth and location.

Identity theft

Due to the high degree of personal info frequently displayed on social networking sites, such as the person’s social security number, which can then be used as part of identity theft. In Order, numerous groups have advised that users moreover not to display their birthday, or to hide it from Facebook ‘friends’ they do not personally know. Cases have also appeared of users having photographs stolen from social networking sites in order to support in identity theft. There is little support that most users of social networking sites are talking full measures to protect themselves from identity theft. As Twitter develops another popular social networking site where users and celebrities are able to share their thoughts through "status updates," there are also weaknesses on using the social networking website as you are exposed to getting your profile hacked. Several of celebrities have claimed to have their Twitter accounts hacked. (Pelgrin 2010)

Social Networking Safely

It's up to parents to make sure their kids are safe when they use social networking. Many of the same rules that apply to online chat apply to these sites (Pelgrin 2010)

Apply an assumed name

Shouldn't give out personal info to unknown people.

Immediately ending any communication that is uncomfortable and report it to a parent.

For younger teens, should examine any sites they'd like to use. Find out what privacy protections are in place and persist that they use them. For children under 16, that frequently means a private profile that can only be seen by approved friends.

Older teens may want a public profile to promote a band or other creative work. In this case, children creating a second, public profile for the project while still restricting the personal profile to family and close friends. It's best to set up these profiles with a free e-mail from Yahoo or Google using an alias that can't be traced back to find personal information. (Pelgrin 2010)

Task 01 (a)

Social networking is all about building rely. People will most often decide in favor of people they trust over people they don't know. So the ethical conflict comes into play when decisions are based on social networks rather than purely on facts and logic.

Types of issues which arise in social networking systems

Privacy and security issues

Legal issues

Ethical issues

Professional issues

Privacy and security issues

Because of its huge user base, and huge amount of information, they become a prospective channel for attackers to exploit. Many social networking sites try to prevent those exploitations, but many attackers are still able to overcome those security countermeasures by using different techniques. Social network users may not be aware of such threats.

A security issue occurs when a hacker gains unauthorized access to a site's protected coding or written language. Privacy issues, those involving the unwarranted access of private information, don't necessarily have to involve security breaches. (Pelgrin 2010)

But security issues and privacy issues are entirely two different beasts.

Someone can gain access to private information by basically watching you type your password. Especially since anyone who breaches a site's security network open ups the door to easy access to private info belonging to any user, but both types of breaches are often tangled on social networks. As well as the amount of info they're ready to share, but the overall harm to a human user really boils down to how much a user engages in a social networking land site. (Pelgrin 2010)

Security and privacy related to social networking sites are basically behavioral issues, not technology issues. The more information a person posts, the more information becomes available for a possible cooperation by those with malicious objectives. People who provide private, sensitive or confidential information about themselves or other people, whether intentionally or unintentionally, posture a higher risk to themselves and others. (Pelgrin 2010)

Information such as a person's social security number, street address, phone number, financial information, or confidential business information should not be published online. Likewise, posting photos, videos or audio files could lead to an organization's breach of privacy or an individual's breach of privacy.

Below are some helpful tips regarding security and privacy while using social networking sites: (succeedsocially.com 2006)

Ensure that any computer you use to connect to a social media site has proper security measures in place. Use and maintain anti-virus software and keep your application and operating system patches up-to-date.

Use caution when clicking a link to another page or running an online application, even if it is from someone you know. Many applications implanted within social networking sites need you to share your information when you use them. Attackers use these sites to distribute their malware.

Use strong and unique passwords. Using the same password on all accounts increases the vulnerability of these accounts if one becomes cooperated.

If screen names are allowed, do not choose one that gives away too much personal information.

Be careful who you add as a "friend," or what groups or pages you join. The more "friends" you have or groups/pages you join the more people who have access to your information.

For both business and personal apply, personal info should not be shared.

Use discretion before posting information or commenting about anything. Once information is posted online, it can potentially be viewed by anyone and may not be retracted afterwards. Keep in mind that content or communications on government-related social networking pages may be considered public records.

Arrange privacy settings to allow only those people you trust to have access to the information you post. Also, restrict the ability for others to post information to your page. The default settings for some sites may allow anyone to see your information or post information to your page; these settings should be changed.

Review a site's privacy policy. Some sites may share information such as email addresses or user preferences with other parties. If a site's privacy policy is ambiguous or does not properly protect your information, do not use the site.

To overcome these circumstances many social networking sites are putting their effort on coming up with various solutions

Tackling Responsibilization

Studying and addressing these privacy and security concerns in online social networks is the research challenge that they are undertaking in SPION. Specifically, they plan to tackle the responsibilization of entities with the task of mitigating privacy and security concerns in online social networks by setting the focus on the responsibilities of service providers and stakeholder organizations. (Kelleher 2006) Exploring ways in which the fundamental social networking organizations that run them can be made liable and answerable for the significant privacy and security concerns. And also propose ways to develop and run SNS that are technically more secure and clear to different stakeholders. The suggestions will include mechanisms that fulfill the SNS user communities' privacy needs. . (Kelleher 2006)

An Interdisciplinary Approach

Our objective by upcoming our target audience's needs as well as descriptors of responsibilization from a variation of disciplines, this target audience includes users, communities and organizations. And also to bring the proposed legal, technical, social, educational and economic mechanisms to connect these concerns to the attention of different stakeholders of online social networks. . (Kelleher 2006)

Supporting Tools

Social networking sites plan to develop solutions that facilitate better decision making with veneration to the target groups' privacy and security concerns, to mitigate the risks, threats and concerns that are currently obvious the domains, and, most importantly, create educational tools to increase the awareness of privacy-issues with youngsters. With the broadcasting and application of the research results they assume to contribute to increasing awareness about privacy and security problems in online social networks. . (Kelleher 2006)

Legal issues in social networking

Existing laws apply equally to online and offline conduct. The content you post on a social networking site being revised as other content that is published by the organization on a more formal basis.

When individuals choose to use social networking sites for both personal and professional purposes, issues arise concerning the nature and amount of information shared. While some social networkers strongly control information about themselves, others provide full access to anyone on the internet.

The ethical responsibilities that lie on the providers of social networking websites, parents and educators also have a role to play in the proper use of social websites by those under their charge, and so we will turn our attention to them, providing some recommendations for a safe and ethically appropriate environment for all the users under both personal and professional purposes.

Copyright Violation. Content-related risks must be taken into account when appealing in social networking. While the technology of the Internet may easily allow text, graphics, photos and logos to be copied and pasted from one site to another, doing so will, in most instances, violate copyright law. Using any third party content, i.e., photos that were taken by or belong to someone else or grabbing a video or song off of a third party web site without permission can result in both illegal and civil liability, including triple damages and attorney fees under the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. Section 101, et. Seq.1 Copyright holders can take stringent measures to enforce their rights. In 2007, Getty Images, Inc., the world's leading provider of visual content, established a partnership with Pic Scout, a company that uses sophisticated crawling and image recognition technology to track down unauthorized use of Getty Images' copyrighted works online. (Idumange 2012)

Use of Likeness. Posting photos or videos of people without their permission can also result in responsibility based on breach of privacy rights. The best practice is to achieve a release of likeness from each person in a photo or video before posting it, particularly if it could be argued that the content is for a commercial purpose or use. (Idumange 2012)

Terms of Use. Most social networking sites address the use of third party content in their terms of use. For an instance Twitter’s "Basic Terms" include the statement that users are "solely responsible for any data, text, information, screen names, graphics, photos, profiles, audit and video clips, links" that the user submits, posts or displays. Another Rudimentary Term states that users "must not, in the use of Twitter, violate any laws in your authority Therefore, in addition to violating copyright laws, the illegal use of third party content violates the terms of use of most social networking sites and could attend as an additional basis for liability. (Idumange 2012)

Flouting Notification. Attentive that copyright breach is a real possibility on their sites, many social networks provide a mechanism to notify them of trespassing activities by their users. Facebook, for example, has a separate "Facebook Copyright Policy" in addition to its Terms of Use, with unambiguous directions on how to report events of copyright breach and indicating that Facebook will take prompt action upon receipt of such a report, including taking down trespassing content and sacking repeat criminals. (Idumange 2012)

Minimizing the Risks. These content-related risks can be minimized through various steps, including founding and following organizational guidelines regarding the journal of online content. Such policies should address attribution disclaimers, the review of all content before its release, screening of third party content for copyright permission issues and procurement suitable releases. (Idumange 2012)

Violation user’s data protection rights

The presence by the users of personal details regarding to themselves or other users in a social network involve a risk of violation in data protection subject: -

Not agree data transfer.-Data, once published, are deserted to the network and are available to the public in general. Moreover, it results very easy to the social network members or to other networks to copy the data, because these personal details are leaked to other servers and even indexed to general search engines. (Idumange 2012)

Violation of the quality or the principle data purpose. - The secondary uses of the personal data are other example of this right violation. A complete percentage of human resources managers admit to use data from social networks services for their works, to verify and/or complete data of job applicant. Similarly, there are many marketing firms that use the data distributed on social networks to make surveys and statistics about various products. In some cases, even these companies have nothing to ensure with social networks are allowed to send surveys to users for commercial use. (Idumange 2012)

Difficulty in exercising to cancel right of the data.- The problem of the users who dump the data in a social network is its absence of protection to the data coping, and the usual "indexing" by search engines, making it difficult from exercise the cancellation rights. (Idumange 2012)

Absence of uniform rule at the international level. - Absence of international standard regulation to use the social network can only increase the lack of security for the users. Although at the European level, the Directive 95/46, on Oct. 24, regarding the data treatment of personal data, similarly other exact that accompaniment and guarantee the data protection rights in the European Union level, most of service providers of social networks (for example Facebook), are domiciled outside the scope of the European Union, so that it is not realizing the aforesaid regulation. Therefore, it is needed to create internationally applicable rules able to respond to global problems which due to its nature usually pose this kind of networks. (Idumange 2012)

So, the Answer is . . . Social networking can be a great marketing tool but can also be a legal landmine for the innocent. Using social networking to launch and conserve personal and business relationships can be very productive but must always take into reflection the innumerable of ever-lurking legal consequences.

Ethical issues in social networking

The first thing we need to be conscious of as educators is that social websites will have a regular and effective influence on the education and value-formation of young people. If friends have always had a direct impact on the shaping of minds of children and teenagers, even more so now that a massive collection of media can be utilized to influence a person’s way of thinking and of looking at the world.

The media have emphasized some of the more specious threats to which children are unprotected when engaging in social websites: providing personal information to child predators or scammers, cyber-bullying, and gaining access to inappropriate material for children. (KITE 2011) Horror stories abound about these. However, unnecessary engagement on these sites can have a much more insidious and de-formative consequence on young users: something we don’t hear much about on media bulletins. For starters, it can be a terrible waste of time: hours can be spent editing your profile, looking into other people’s profiles, watching video-clips, exploring new widgets, etc . . . . (KITE 2011)

Legal principles and ethical principles are often closely associated, but they are not the same and they have unlike objectives. Laws comprise a system of rules that stabilize social institutions. They have a function of determining when to bring social authorization on individual citizens and their specific acts. . (KITE 2011) Ethics involve why and how one must act. They are more concerned than laws in stimulating social ideals. Ethical principles also may be viewed as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves

Many professional codes of ethics propose principles that are perfectly legal to ignore. It is, for example, not a criminal offence for a professional engineer to be shameful. Relying on the law to resolve an ethical dilemma will fail to take into account many of the requirements and duties that our society expects of its members. (KITE 2011)

Ethical concerns provide another way to analyze appropriate use of social networking sites. Social networking disquiets may overlay with similar concerns relate with the Internet, e-mail, and regular work behavior .(KITE 2011) Though many social networking issues such as security, privacy, and accuracy are directly related with the fair collection of information, we go beyond fair collection of information issues by also concentrating on discipline and dignity issues. These are isolated from fair collection of information issues because efficiency focuses more on good business practices, discipline focuses on practical fairness, and dignity focuses on the state of being honored and esteemed. (KITE 2011)

A liable and ethical service provider should be willing to inform users of the safest and most appropriate control tools in the system, especially for young users.

The most effective and the most ethical method to keep children safe online is education: talking to them, warning them of dangers, learning the protocol of on-line relationships, exploring together the ethical consequences of misuse, etc. It is a challenging task but one that parents cannot shy away from.(KITE 2011) Parents also need to foster face-to-face communication with their children and inspire off-line social activities with friends. They should inspire reading and writing. And they should fight the demands for personal exhibitionism and experience of their children that is being driven by the pop-culture of modern media.

How to maintain Ethics with social networking (KITE 2011)

Honesty

Transparency

Respect

Privacy

Relevance

Responsibility

Professional issues in social networking

The remunerations of social networking are ample if used and accessed in the right way. Sites can offer a way of sharing information and contacting friends but be aware of any preventive policies your employer has. (Kelleher 2006) Also consider how it might look to a client if you are using social networking sites in the workplace when your presence is required elsewhere.

For an instance, a number of health-care staff has been suspended from their jobs following incidents of unprofessional behavior. "One nurse posted a picture of herself topless at work and another, although clothed, posted a photograph with a patient clearly recognizable in the background. In another instance, accident and emergency staff posted pictures of themselves lying down in several postures around the hospital to gain points in an online game." (Kelleher 2006)

There has, and will perhaps remain to be, a huge growth in the use of the internet for communication devotions. Conversations which were once private between a limited numbers of people are now in a permanent form. Even if the user deletes their record they have no way of knowing how many people have downloaded it.

The growth of social networking platforms has been impressive. Millions of people around the world with access to the Internet are members of one or more social networks. They have a permanent online existence where they create profiles, share photos, share their thoughts with friends and spend hours grasping up with what their hundreds of friends are doing with their lives. . (Kelleher 2006)

Give most people access to the Internet and they will spend the next hour checking their email, their Facebook profile, their MySpace Web page, updating their Twitter account and their LinkedIn account.(Kelleher 2006) And it doesn’t ensue only once a day. The time spent using social networking applications is one purpose why many businesses are hesitant to allow employees to use sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn during office hours. Add the time spent on non-work related browsing, and employers have a fact. At the same time, however, businesses are starting to appreciate that social networking has its advantages, and there are many companies that have assumed social networking as another vehicle to gain a better occurrence online and a wider audience. (Kelleher 2006)

Tips to overcome such issues

What is worrying about social networking sites is that they encourage people to give as much information about themselves as possible. Even the most prudent and well-meaning individuals can give away information they should not – the same applies to what is put online via company-approved social networking platforms.

At the same time, nearly everyone today (even senior managers) has their own online profile on a social networking site and like the idea that they can keep in touch with contacts and friends (and their employees) via that interface.(succeedsocially.com 2006)

If a business is going to allow access to social networking sites, there are some basic tips to follow:

Restrict access. Give employees a breather and allow them to access social networking sites during their lunch break, before and after office hours. Web filtering software gives administrators the ability to implement time-based access to these and other sites. .(succeedsocially.com 2006)

Educate and train staff. This is very important. Most employees are not aware how their actions online can cause security issues for the organization. Tell them in a language they understand how a simple click on a link they receive or an application they download can result in malware infecting their machine and the network. Additionally, tell them not to click on suspicious links and to pay attention when giving out personal details online. Just because employees are clever enough to have an online profile does not mean they are technically savvy or that they have a high level of security awareness. .(succeedsocially.com 2006)

Set security and usage policies. Have all employees sign any policies related to the use of the Internet at work, access to social networking sites and what they are allowed to say or do during office hours. Monitoring of all Web activity is important, and employees should be aware that their actions are being recorded and that failure to adhere to company policy can result in disciplinary action and dismissal. .(succeedsocially.com 2006)

Recommendations

There is no simple solution to any of the above issues. While internal controls and technology can be used to an extent to control employee use of social networking tools, it is impossible to control what they are posting at home.

And this is the dilemma that many businesses face today: They feel the need to change and adopt these new methods of communication but they are greatly concerned that the disadvantages and possible repercussions are too serious to ignore.(Pelgrin 2010) Every action, every minute spent online (and on social networking sites) may expose an organization to numerous security threats. While the subject of productivity increase is debatable, the security issues are not – they are all too real.

They have three options:

Ban access to social networking sites (and access to Internet as well).

Set limits and restrictions on use.

Allow unmonitored access.

Banning access to social networking sites may be an optimal solution for some organizations, and one can see banks and government departments particularly keen on keeping the status. However, many smaller organizations may feel that taking a heavy-handed approach could be counterproductive, indicate a lack of trust in employees (probably justified to an extent) and is too restrictive. (Pelgrin 2010)

Expanding Market Research

Social networking sites give businesses a fantastic opportunity to widen their circle of contacts. Using Facebook, for example, a small business can target an audience of thousands without much effort or advertising. With a good company profile and little in terms of costs, a new market opens up, as do the prospects to do business. (Pelgrin 2010)

Personal Touch

Social networks allow organizations to reach out to select groups or individuals and to target them personally. Businesses can inspire their customers to develop connections or friends, contribution of special discounts that would be elite to online contacts. This personal touch is not only treasured but may give the business access to that customer’s own network of contacts. (Pelgrin 2010)

Improve Your Reputation

Building strong social networks can help a business to increase its reputation with as little advertising as conceivable. Social networks can boost your image as thought leaders in the field and customers/contacts start to recognize your business as dependable and an excellent cradle of information/products that suit their requirements. (Pelgrin 2010)

Low-Cost Marketing

Once social networks have become recognized and people become conversant with the brand, businesses can use the sites or applications to implement marketing campaigns, announce special offers, and make important announcements and direct interested people to the specific Web sites. It is mostly free advertising, and the only cost to the business is the time and effort required to maintain the network and the official Web site. (Pelgrin 2010)

Drawbacks

Social networking sites are applications and, as such, are generally not a problem for organizations. It is the people who use them that are a cause for concern. Social networkers, if one can call them so, are the root of five problems for an organization that allows social networking at work. (Pelgrin 2010)

Productivity

One reason why organizations ban social networking in the workplace is the fact that employees spend a great deal of time updating their profiles and sites throughout the day. If every employee in a 50-strong workforce spent 30 minutes on a social networking site every day, that would work out to a loss of 6,500 hours of productivity in one year! Although this may be a generalization, organizations look very carefully at productivity issues, and 25 hours of non-productive work per day does not go over well with management. When you factor in the average wage per hour you get a better (and decisive) picture. (Pelgrin 2010)

There is also an effect on company morale. Employees do not appreciate colleagues spending hours on social networking sites (and others) while they are functioning to cover the workload. The impact is more pronounced if no action is taken against the abusers.

Resources

Although updates from sites like Facebook or LinkedIn may not take up huge amounts of bandwidth, the availability of (bandwidth-hungry) video links posted on these sites creates problems for IT administrators. There is a cost to Internet browsing, especially when high levels of bandwidth are required. (Pelgrin 2010)

Viruses and Malware

This threat is often overlooked by organizations. Hackers are attracted to social networking sites because they see the possibility to commit fraud and launch spam and malware attacks. There are more than 50,000 applications available for Facebook (according to the company) and while Facebook may make every exertion to provide security against malware, these third-party applications may not all be safe. Some have the possibility to be used to infect computers with malicious code, which in turn can be used to collect data from that user’s site. (Pelgrin 2010)

Social Engineering

Social engineering is becoming a fine art and more and more people are falling victim to online scams that seem genuine. This can result in data or identity theft. (Pelgrin 2010) Users may be convinced to give personal details such as Social Security numbers, employment details and so on. By collecting such information, data theft becomes a serious risk.

On the other hand, people have a habit of posting details in their social networking profiles. While they would never disclose certain information when meeting someone for the first time, they see nothing wrong with posting it online for all to see on their profile, personal blog or other social networking site account.

Employers must be on the lookout for information that their employees may post, as this may have an impact on the company. People often post messages without thinking through what they’ve have written. .(Pelgrin 2010) A seemingly innocuous message such as "I’m working this weekend because we’ve found a problem in our front-end product" may be a spur-of-the-moment comment but could raise concern among customers who may use that system, especially if the company handles confidential or financial detail.(KITE 2011)

Conclusion

Employers should offer clearness both to potential applicants and to current employees about their screening processes and practices relating to their use of Online Social Networking Web Sites. MySpace and Facebook both have terms of use that talk about their noncommercial usage. The fright is that biased implication could be claimed when adverse personal information from outside sources has been exploited in appraisals.

Further research and conversation are needed on the topic of privacy, legality and ethics related to social networking web sites as guides to practice. As more legal issues come to the fore, it will be serious for professionals to stay well-informed of instances.

My main conclusion is thus that there needs to be a moral code and propriety regarding behavior in online websites. The duty for teaching this code of behavior lies not only with parents and educators but also with the service providers themselves.

I would like to end on a positive note. I confidently believe that social networking onlineisanewandwonderfulpracticeofpersonalcommunicationthatisheretostay and that can serve the common good well. At the same time, those of us who care for the safe and sound realization of younger generations need to explain them the best way to make the most of the singularity to guarantee this new medium does not devalue such high personalities of personhood like friendship, love and self-esteem.