Cons of social networking sites

CON’s of Social Networking Sites
1. Social networking sites entice people to waste time.
According to statistics, 40% of 8 to 18 year olds spend 54 minutes a day on social media sites. 36% of people surveyed listed social networking as the "biggest waste of time," above fantasy sports, watching TV, and shopping. When alerted to a new social networking site activity, like a new tweet or Facebook message, users take 20 to 25 minutes on average to return to the original task. In 30% of cases, it took two hours to fully return attention to the original task. 42% of Internet users play games like Farmville or Mafia Wars or Candy Crush on social networking sites.
2. People who use social networking sites are prone to social isolation.
Social networking can exacerbate feelings of disconnect, especially for youth with disabilities and put children at higher risk for depression, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. The "passive consumption" of social media for eg.scanning posts without commenting is related to loneliness.
[iv]3. Children may endanger themselves by not understanding the public and viral nature of social networking sites.
The 2012 film Project X, about an out of control high school house party due to social media promotion, prompted copycat parties across the US resulting in arrests for vandalism, criminal trespassing, and other offenses. Up to 600 Dutch riot police had to be called in to break up a teen's birthday party to which about 30,000 people were accidentally invited after a Facebook post thought to be private went viral (quickly moving on to Twitter and YouTube as well). As a result, at least three people were hurt and 20 people were arrested for vandalism, looting, setting cars on fire, and damaging lampposts. In 2012, a similar incident happened in Los Angeles and resulted in the teen host beaten and hospitalized. The main cause behind these accidents is children being unaware of the viral nature of these social networking sites.
4. Students who are heavy social media users tend to have lower grades.
According to statistics, students who use social media had an average GPA of 3.06 while non-users had an average GPA of 3.82 and students who used social networking sites while studying scored 20% lower on tests. College students’ grades dropped 0.12 points for every 93 minutes above the average 106 minutes spent on Facebook per day. Two-thirds of teachers believe that social media does more to distract students than to help academically.
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5. Social networking sites harm employees' productivity.
51% of people aged 25-34 accessed social media while at work. Two-thirds of US workers with Facebook accounts access the site during work hours. Even spending just 30 minutes a day on social media while at work would cost a 50-person company 6,500 hours of productivity a year. 51% of workers think work productivity suffers because of social media. 6. Social networking site users are vulnerable to security attacks such as hacking, identity theft, and viruses.
Social networks do not scan messages for viruses or phishing scams, leading to large-scale problems like the 2012 virus Steckt.Evl spread from Facebook's chat window. 68% of social media users share their birth date publicly, 63% share their high school name, 18% share their phone number, 12% share a pet's name; each of those pieces of information is frequently used for account security verification and can be used for identity theft.
7. Criminals use social media to commit and promote crimes.
Gangs use the sites to recruit younger members, coordinate violent crimes, and threaten other gangs. Offline crimes like home robberies [vi]may result from posting personal information such as vacation plans or stalkers gaining information about a victim’s whereabouts from posts, photos, or location tagging services.
8. Social media enables the spread of unreliable and false information.
Many people have heard false news via social media. On Sep. 5, 2012 false rumors of fires, shootouts, and caravans of gunmen in a Mexico City suburb spread via Twitter and Facebook caused panic, flooded the local police department with over 3,000 phone calls, and temporarily closed schools. Shashank Tripathi, tweeting as @ComfortablySmug, spread false information in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy by tweeting that the New York Stock Exchange was flooding and that the power company would cut off electricity to all of Manhattan; the bogus information was picked up by national news outlets including CNN and the Weather Channel. 9. Social media causes people to spend less time interacting face-to-face.
On January 2012, Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School study found that the percentage of people reporting less face-to-face time with family in their homes rose from 8% in 2000 to 34% in 2011. 32% reported using social media or texting during meals (47% of 18-34 year olds) instead of talking with family and friends.
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10. Many people make fake accounts on social networking sites In a report in February 2014, popular social networking site “Facebook” said that at least 67.65 million fake accounts were used in the previous month. Likewise 5% of Twitter’s monthly users are fake. It is very easy to give wrong information like date of birth, education, workplace, profile pictures etc. and fool other people. Many make online friends with people and share personal information without knowing that the account is a fake one. In many cases it leads to mental depression, suicidal attempts and many more.