Effect of Social Media on Society

Facebook, Whatsapp, Youtube and Twitter are amongst the most popular destinations Social networking sites on the web. No doubt in some cases this has contributed to Internet Addiction Disorder and fraudulent activities on the internet, but have they on the whole had a positive effect in our lives? Some believe that the benefits provided by social network sites such as Facebook and whatsapp have made us better off as a society and as individuals, and that, as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, we will see an increase in their utility. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp are examples of communication tools available online. With proliferation of social networking online comes impact on society a difference in what people do and how they do it. Changes in society are simultaneously useful and negative and this is the case with the impact of online social networking. This paper aims to look at the positive effect that interaction through social networking sites has on todayrsquos society in relation to the modern media concept of greater interaction.


I. INTRODUCTION
Social networking has become an important part in our daily lives as evidenced by the huge user communities. Some communities even exceed the population of large countries, for example Facebook has over 195.6 to 191.3 million active users in countries like India, Merica, Nigeria, Togo, Liberia etc.
Social networks provide a platform to facilitate communication and sharing between users, thereforemodelling real world relationships. Social Networking has also extended beyond communication between friends.
Social computing begins with the observation that humans and human behavior are profoundly social. From birth, humans orient to one another, and as they grow, they develop abilities for interacting with each other. This ranges from expression and gesture to spoken and written language.As a consequence, people are remarkably sensitive to the behavior of those around them and make countless decisions that are shaped by their social context. Social networking is a phenomenon which has existed since society began. Two Human beings have always sought to live in social environments. The proliferation of social networking sites (SNS) and their pervasion in everyday practices is affecting how Western societies manage their social networks. To a significant extent, SNS have shifted social networking to the Internet. In less than five years, these sites have grown from a niche online activity into a phenomenon through which tens of millions of internet users Dr. Adil Jamil Zaru, King Khalid University Abha, PhD. Computer Science and Engineering are connected, both in their leisure time, and at work [2].
There are various factors which have prompted us to consider the implications of these technologies for policy-making. One of these is the willingness of users to embrace SNS as a means of communication and social networking in everyday life. The increasing dependence on technology for basic communication also highlights the importance of analysing how SNS are affecting daily processes. Sites like Facebook, Friendster and LinkedIn are influencing the way users establish, maintain and cultivate a range of social relationships, from close friendships to casual acquaintances. Finally, there has been very little research on the socio-economic impact of these sites. Recent advancements in mobile device technologies are revolutionizing how we socialize, interact, and connect by connecting the virtual community with the local environment mobile social networks (MSNs) create the opportunity for a multitude of new personalized services for mobile users. Along with that comes the need for new paradigms, mechanisms, and techniques with the capacity to autonomously manage their functioning and evolution. Currently, most books about mobile networks focus mainly on the technical point of view [3].

II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
It is observed that students and workers devote more attention to social networking sites than they do to their studies and job respectively. Therefore, the question in this study is out to answer is: how do social network affect education, businesses and other jobs.

III. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. To find out the various social networking sites mostly used in our society; 2. To find out reasons why people join social networks; 3. To determine how social networks impact on young people in the society; and 4. To ascertain how the use of social media has affected the people negatively and positively IV. CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION AND LITERATURE REVIEW Needs to clarify some concepts and review some literature with regards to developing the subject in India:

A. Computer user
A user is an agent, either a human agent (end-user) or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username Effect of Social Media on Society Dr. Adil Jamil Zaru www.ijntr.org which derives from the identical Citizens Band radio terms [4].

B. Computer programming
Computer programming in general is the process of writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code and documentation of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language which is an artificial language often more restrictive or demanding than natural languages, but easily translated by the computer. The purpose of programming is to invoke the desired behavior (customization) from the machine [5].

C. Computer software and hardware
Computer software or just "software" is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it (wordreference.com). Software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words, software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms and its documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system. Computer hardware is the physical devices [6].

D. Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies (Wikipedia; the free encyclopedia). The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.
For corporate communications, internets technologies offer many possibilities, from text-based e-mail to transmission of images and sound, even via own web sites [8] .
Organizational websites provide challenges and opportunities for public relations (PR) practitioners by building dialogue with its different publics [9].

E. Internet in India
The Internet is regarded as one of the most useful inventions in mass communication, as an agent of human and social development or as an important transmitter of globalization [8].
In India the web is now established as a mass market media channel for the wealthy. Email has become a mass market media channel for office workers and professional classes. Mobile (for SMS) is a mass market media channel across many demographics, but while mobile use is very high, mobile devices and the web will not properly converge until late 2010. The main changes in internet access have happened in the last five years and the internet has become an essential part of office life, and plays a key role in many homes. The number of people with access continues to rise, but so too does the time they spend online. Broadband access is growing fast, but the number of home connections lags behind comparable markets; however although the number of connections is low, a large number of people in high-end demographics have access. Significant infrastructure problems remain, creating a high cost for access compared to average wage rates [9].
However, Internet use in India is not much different from other parts of the world such as Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. For instance, there are businesses that depend on Internet use to reach both old and new clients who have developed a sophisticated test for technology and new media in general. The youths in Mumbai, Banglore,Delhia and other parts of India increasingly use the Internet as a way of crafting and testing out lifestyles, such as making new friends and online dating across the globe [9].
It is common now to hear Indian teenagers talk about Facebook and their goal of befriending people around the world to build social capital. The major challenge with the Internet in India, however, is the slow speed due to bandwidth and overcapacity. Audio-visuals also contribute to the limitations of Internet usage in most parts of India. In the early 2000s, [10] drew attention to how the Internet was used by individuals, institutions, and nations alike to represent their culture and to promote national identity. He claimed that at that time, the scramble to produce online content to promote national identities sometimes led to cyber warfare, which he conceptualized as the use of the Internet to attack the views and opinions of opposing groups and ethnicities. Later in the decade, reference [15] opined that some governments were uneasy about the potential of new media and its effectiveness in shaping the mindsets and attitudes of citizens concerning dictatorial regimes in India.

F. Social computing:
Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behaviour and computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing, but also other kinds of software applications where people interact socially [16].
"Social Computing" refers to systems that support the gathering, representation, processing, use, and dissemination of information that is distributed across social collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, and markets. Moreover, the information is not "anonymous" but is significant precisely because it is linked to people, who are in turn linked to other people [17].

G. Social networking:
Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. While social networking has gone on almost as long as societies themselves have existed, the unparalleled potential of the Internet to promote such connections is only now being fully recognized and exploited, through Web-based groups established for that purpose [18]. A social structure made of nodes that are generally individuals or organizations. A social network represents

H. Social network:
Alternatively referred to as a virtual community or profile site, a social network is a website on the Internet that brings people together in a central location to talk, share ideas and interests, or make new friends.

I. Social Network in India :
The use of the internet and subsequently social media has become widely recognized by people of all ages and geographical dispensations [11]. People rely on the internet as a source of information, and as a way of getting fast information. The traditional media have been acknowledged for years as reliable sources of getting news [20], but the same cannot be said of the social media.

J. Social media:
Unlike traditional media that is often created by no more than 10 people, social media sites contain content that has been created by hundreds or even millions of different people. Social media has become an outlet that is one of the most widely used ways of interacting through computers. Though there are many different platforms that can be used for social media, they all serve the same primary purpose of creating a social interaction through computers, mobile devices, etc. Social media has evolved into not just an interaction through text, but through pictures, videos, and many other forms of multimedia. This has provided users an enhanced way to interact with other users while being able to more widely express and share during computational interaction. Within the last couple decades, social media has blown up and created many famous applications within the social computing arena [21].

K. List of some of the biggest social networks used today :
Friendster:(http://www.friendster.com/) -A popular social network that brings together friends, family, and allows you to meet new people who share similar interests to you from all over the world. Google+:(http://plus.google.com/) -The latest social networking service from Google.
LinkedIn:(http://www.linkedin.com/) -One of the best if not the best locations to connect with current and past co-workers and potentially future employers.
MySpace: (http://www.myspace.com/) -One of the most popular social networks and one of the most viewed website on the Internet.
Orkut:(http://www.orkut.com/) -A popular service from Google that provides you a location to socialize with your friends and family, and meet new acquaintances from all around the world.
Twitter:(http://www.twitter.com/) -Another good service that allows users to post 140 character long posts from their phones and on the Internet. A better way to get the pulse of what's going on around the world.
Windows Live Spaces:(http://spaces.live.com/) -A service by Microsoft that allows any user to create their own personal blog and social networking site.
YouTube:(http://www.youtube.com/) -A great network of users posting video blogs or Vlog's and other fun and interesting videos.
Facebook: (http://www.facebook.com/) -One of the most popular social networking websites on the Internet. Facebook is a popular destination for users to setup their own personal web pages, connect with friends, share pictures, share movies, talk about what you're doing, etc.

L. Mobile social networking and computing:
The internet has long been used for social interaction, with some of the more popular examples being social networking applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. These types of applications help users share digital media and have proven to be successful tools for expanding the social network. There is also a trend toward extensive use of social networking application from mobile devices. The landscape of mobile platforms has seen a major evolution in the recent past. In the era of smart phones and tablets, mobile applications are providing added value to several industries including transportation, ecommerce, net banking, and travel, retail, and enterprise services. Developers are exploiting the state-of-the-art functionalities of the smart devices to offer a revolutionising user experience. In turn, they are becoming the engine for innovation. Thus, it is of prime importance for a mobile platform provider to attract more and more developers in order to boast external investment and revenue. Not only the mobile platform owners and handset manufacturers but also network service providers and chipset makers are investing heavily to develop and release software kits to reach out to the developers [22].

V. METHODOLOGY
There are diverse set of people in India both the Young and old, unemployed and employed, students and so also different offices and work place. Using the simple random sampling technique, five different offices were visited which include Ministry of Defence, National bank, National Defence College, NYSC secretariat and the Cyber cafes Using the purposive sampling technique, the researcher purposively selected a sample size of 100 respondents from the five offices. Each offices contributed 20 sample sizes Therefore, the sample size for the study were 100 respondents.
Data was collected using the questionnaire which the researcher administered face to face to the respondents. Out of 120 copies of questionnaire distributed to the respondents, 100 copies were retrieved. This represented a response rate of 83.3%.

A. Data presentation and analysis Analysis of Demographic Data
Items 1 and 2 in the questionnaire answered question on the demography of respondents. Question 1; What is your Occupation? 41% of the Respondents are Civil servants, 24% were Unemployed, 19% are Corps member and 16% are students. This indicates that the Civil servants uses social networks a lot which may lead to inefficiency at work dues to some workers that waste their time on SNS, so also it affect the www.ijntr.org Students who are distracted by social network instead of concentrating on their studies, it could also be of positive impact on the unemployed as it helps them to get information on different SNS.
Question 2; what is your age bracket? 50% of the Respondents were between the age of 35 and 50, 20% were age 10 to 20 while 20% were between the age 20 and 35 and 10% between 55 and above.
This implies that the age bracket 35 and 50 in India is mostly involved in the usage of social network which may affect them negatively in the case of Cyber bullying and distractions at work place as most of them are in working class.

Analysis of Data from Survey (field) Research question 3:
Do you believe social networking has been of help in our World?   Table 4&5 indicates that despite the disadvantages of owning a social network account it is still more advantageous so parents should allow their children to have access to social network as it assist them in knowing what is happening around them and it also help them to keep up open communication among friends and family, so also the youths should make better use of the positive aspect of Social networks.

Question 8:
Which do you think is the major advantage of social networks?

Figure 3
Table 6&7 shows the major advantages and disadvantages of social networks. Social networks facilitate open communication, provides an opportunity to widen business contact and it makes it easier to keep in touch with family and friends. All these advantages helps to impact the Society positively, it boost up the economy and promote love and intimacy among friends and family. The major disadvantages of social networks are It open up possibility for hackers to commit fraud which can also be a threat to National and financial security, It can ruin relationship: several relationship has been ruined since the emergence of Social networks and lastly social network has really affected a lot of jobs at work place and education of students at it waste peoples time due to the distraction. Question 10: What are your reasons for joining social networks? VI. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS The findings showed that: I. A great number of the people living in India uses Facebook most followed by Whatsapp, Twitter, Youtube, Linkendin and friendster respectively.
II. The reasons why people of India join social networks include meet new people, find old friends, chat the day away, join interest group, create photo album and share photos, get advice, help, belong.
III. Social networks have been of 50% negative impact on youth.
IV. Due to a great number of crimes committed on social network and times spent on social networking activities and therefore, fail to create a balance between the social media and education, business and at work place, social network has negative impact so also the positive effects include: it facilitates open communication, provides opportunity to widen business contact, makes it easier to keep in touch with friends and family.

VII. RECOMMENDATIONS
In compliance with the analysis of my survey on Impact of social network on society. I will recommend the following: • Government should encourage both the young and old by making it cheaper to get access to internet which lead to having good opportunity to access social network as it promotes unity and love among individuals most especially citizens of the country.
• Government should find a way of securing SNS so as to avoid fraudulent acts of hackers as this is the major negative effect of SN in our environment.
• Parent should introduce their kids to social networking to make them more effective in knowing what is happening around the world as it is a source of getting information.
• Young people should try not to be wasting their time on SNS so as not to affect their academics rather they should make judicious use of the positive effects of SN.
• More awareness raising and educational campaigns highlighting safe usage of SNS are needed. It is important that people learn how to manage their online data. Parents should also be involved in such educational events.