Nonetheless, SNSs can also negatively impact individuals who use them. One danger is the large amount of uncontrolled resources, especially for children, adolescents and younger adults. According to the “The UK Children Go Online ” survey, among the 9-19 year old children who use social networking weekly in Great Britain, 57% of them had watched pornography online, 31% had watched violence and 11% had watched racist content and even 31% had accepted sexual comments and 28% had sent unrequested sexual materials (Livingstone and Brake, 2010:78). The researchers also point out that teenagers are relatively less careful when communicating online so that they lack awareness for the consequences. Another considerable threat to young people is the digital footprints which could presumably affect their future reputation, such as posting inappropriate content which may affect their success with job applications (O’Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson, 2011: 802). Finally, it is possible that excessive use of SNSs can lead to shortened attention spans which clearly could decrease children’s educational potential (Greenfield 2009, cited by Fletcher and Matthews, 2011:126) For the above reasons, parents certainly play an important role in guiding children to avoid inappropriate sources and ensure a healthy information environment for children and adolescents using SNSs.
SNSs can also benefit individuals at the workplace. Firstly, working adults can post their company’s products, photos, and videos to such sites as 英国代写 and Twitter. It enables them to advertise company’s products, services and manage relationships with their customers at the same time (Kim et al, 2010:228; Smith and Kidder, 2010:494). Moreover, job seekers can add company’s web pages or job information groups, send questions, post applications and accept job and internship opportunities regularly (Smith and Kidder, 2010:494). Additionally, the ability to work effectively with computer and internet has become a necessary domain in the work place recently (Smith and Kidder, 2010:494). As a result, SNSs participation seems to be essential as a desirable skill for jobs which contain technical and networking skills
Nevertheless, several concerns in work domain are associated with expanded use of SNSs for users. First of all, job seekers might wildly exaggerate about themselves in their application forms which may lead employers to choose wrong person to their company who are actually without the abilities (Smith and Kidder, 2010:495). What is more, employees using SNS at work may infect their colleagues’ computers with viruses, or may reveal their passwords leaving them vulnerable to spammers and phishing (Kim et al, 2010:231). Nevertheless, these problems could perhaps be solved by various methods including setting safe logging out, providing personal codes and exercising caution about information input through SNSs.
As this essay has discussed, SNSs have many positive aspects such as enhancing connection between users, engaging formal and informal online education and they are also evidently useful for working adults and job seekers, but there are also risks such as cyberbullying among adolescents and privacy concerns about personal information. However, due to SNSs’ popularity it is probably not feasible for governments to limit their use. Instead, governments should encourage parents to ensure a safe internet environment for their children or provide educational workshops for families to obtain advice from pediatricians and also establish certain laws for protecting essential data online.
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