Impact of Social Networking Sites

Workplaces:
Decreased productivity: * Employees would get distracted when they have access to social networking sites. This will decrease their work efficiency, hence decreasing the productivity of the company. * Even if they are using the social networking sites for promotion or advertisements (job-related work), it is impossible to justify or make sure that every second they are on the social networking site, they are doing job-related work. If we cannot justify that, we cannot justify the salaries of the employees because they are paid to work, not to facebook. * It does not do the company any good in terms of their productivity if they allow their employees to access social networking sites in workplaces, as they would not be able to track what they employees are doing (whether they are doing job-related work or not). Hence, this is not cost-efficient and it is a waste of human resource as the salaries paid to the employees are not justified. * Company Security. The social media is on the World Wide Web and it is very easy for anyone and anybody from anywhere to simply hack in or simply cause a little trouble. Say, some private projects get accidentally exposed. Information can be easily gotten from the internet, and so unwanted information leaked can also be spread like wild fire. Employees will undoubtedly end up chatting with friends on the social media sites, and may accidentally leak out info when complaining to a friend, whom they did not know was from a possible competitor of the company, for example.

Schools:
Insignificant educational information on the social networking site: * Although some may argue that students can learn something new through the social networking sites, but the truth is the information we get on social networking sites are not significant in terms of educational purposes. What we normally see on these sites are probably latest updates that our friends post. Hence, there is no educational information on social networking sites. If we allow them in schools, we would be diverging our attention away from the main purpose of a school: which is to educate our next generation. * Furthermore, supposing social networking sites could be used for educational purposes and it would be as effective as our current education system, there will be no need for schools or even teachers. The students can have self-directed learning using the social networking sites at home.
It will be a distraction to the students: * No matter how hard we can try to deny the fact, but the fact remains that social networking sites will just become a distraction to the students in schools where they are supposed to be educated. The students would probably be distracted and start updating their status on facebook or twitter etc. This decreases the student’s ability to listen to the teacher and eventually affect one’s learning which is not justifiable as more of the schools receive funds which comes from the government and eventually the taxpayers’ money. Hence, with needed justification from the government to the taxpayers, we cannot allow social networking sites in schools to prevent more distraction.
Decreased face-to-face communication: * The students would lose valuable opportunities for direct face-to-face communication if social networking sites are allowed in schools. They would be able to communicate even behind the computers; however this is not beneficial to the student’s development as they might not be able to communicate efficiently to others when they go out to work in the society.
Social networking sites are not effective for teaching and learning of the syllabus: * Social networking sites cannot meet the need of the some subjects, for example Mathematics where graphs need to be drawn and social networking sites would not be able to meet this need. * Also, exams cannot be done in social networking sites as the answers of every candidate needs to be protected, hence it does not make any sense to allow social networking sites in schools because it is not suitable for the syllabus.

What they say: | What we say: | WORK: Social networking sites can be used for promotion of the company’s products. It is very efficient as the audience base is very large. | Yes we agree that it will be effective advertisement for the company if social networking sites can be used, however we cannot justify that every second that the employee spend on social networking sites, it would be for promotion purposes. This is precisely why we cannot allow them in the workplaces because it decreases work efficiency and productivity which is more significant to the company compared to advertisements. Another point is, it is easier, once uploaded to media websites, for people, to vandalise and find faults with , e.g. the video used for advertisements. Editions can be made and reposted (with simple hacking) and doom the company. To go through the trouble to specially ensure high security defeats the purpose of a wide spread and open internet online. | WORK: Save cost to advertise on social networking sites, because it is free and effective for small companies. | First, no company will not have a budget for advertisements. Second, even if they don’t have budget, they cannot justify that every second that the employee spend on the social networking sites will be for promotion. Hence, they might lose productivity while trying to save money on advertisements. Third, this kind of advertisement is not as effective as media advertising as people might just ignore the posts posted by the companies. (Compared to media advertising where impact on the consumers will be greater.) | WORK: Helps in efficiency and effectiveness, as speed is increased, internet gives ample information, easier to complete tasks online, and even if the person is not there in person, the same work could still be done, if not more effectively. | Half the time, as seen from results, we end up getting distracted by other news and information along the way while doing the job. At the end of the day, job is incomplete or a sloppy job as employee was distracted. Sure, employers could try to enforce certain restrictions on certain functions, or have a time limit, but it will then negate the advantages of using social media. | SCHOOL: Social networking sites could be used as convenient sources for students to discuss, brainstorm and do groupwork. Also, teachers could use them platforms for storing extra notes, and useful information, updates, and even extra notes about what to prepare for future lessons. This reduces time wastage on preparing and talking about things which can easily be read. If they need clarification but forgot to ask during class, you have SOCIAL MEDIA to the rescue! | Such benefits are common place and often discussed. But we managed before without such social media, without much difficulty, and it is not worth using social media with all the disadvantages that come with its use. Distractions, inattentiveness, the tendency for students to bicker nonsensically, e.t.c lead to excessive time wastage.In class, they have lesser tendency to waste time, as there is the presence of the teacher or even without the teacher, in person to person, they are more likely to think and try to brainstorm whatever ideas they get immediately, and can bounce off each other.if really such a need to share notes e.t.c., still social media is not the correct choice. File-sharing websites or simply creating an email update group would be far more efficient. |