Are Social Networking Sites Harmful or Safe - Research Paper Example

2. Social Networking Sites Safe or Not? McDowell and Morda included alarming statistics that highlight the level of integration of social networking sites; there are around 500 million users on Facebook and more than 100 million users on MySpace around the globe (1). The accumulation of such an extravagant population of the world on centralized platforms has brought about numerous issues related to privacy and security of the social networking users. The presence of such an extensive population of the world includes all types of users, such as criminals, hackers etc.

Earlier, internet users were sensitive about the safeguarding of their information and details about their lives, however, the advent of social networking sites has brought about a sudden trend resulting in influx of personal information and news about one’s daily lives on the respective platforms. Users generally follow the on-going trend and post details about their routines and lives on such sites while being unconscious of the possible consequences of such conduct. Livingstone and David stated teenagers tend to reveal their personal information more than others since 49% of the teenagers in US disclose their school names and 29% provide their email addresses (6).

McDowell and Morda stated that even information about upcoming trips, children’s school information and names can give the malicious intent users information that might prove to harm the users and bring about dangerous instances for them, for example, robbery, kidnapping etc (3). Some may argue that social networking sites can prove to be safer and dangerous instances can be avoided if personal details of such nature are not shared on the platform. However, McDowell and Morda stated that the privacy of an individual is even threatened when others post information regarding others, intentionally or unintentionally, and also that such posting is beyond the control of any individual (3).

Livingstone and Brake included figures regarding the degree of inclusion of youngsters on social networking sites and revealed that almost half of the youngsters in UK between the ages of 8 and 17 possess a social networking profile (2). Similar figures have been recorded for USA as well. The presence of such fragile and young minds on social networking sites is not safe since the content on these platforms may be inappropriate for the young viewers. Livingstone and Brake also revealed that 57% of youngsters had been exposed to pornography and 31% of them had seen violent content on social networking sites (5).

Alongside the exposure to inappropriate content, social networking sites have given newer platforms for bullying their peers. Livingstone and Brake included results from a survey that included 12-17 year old participants in the survey. The survey revealed that children were being bullied almost as much online as their real lives since 72% children were being bullied online and 85% were being bullied in school (6). It is argued that cyber bulling on social networking sites is not as bad as it has been portrayed since it is only a verbal attack on the victim, rather than a physical one (“