Social Networking - Standard Grade

Discursive Essay

Most children nowadays have a mobile phone, even at a very young age. There are advantages and disadvantages of children having them but mostly cause a various amount of problems.

Although you may not think using a mobile phone is harmful, it is a health hazard in many ways. Mobile phones can damage your key brain cells and could also lead to the Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have found that radiation from mobile phones damages areas of the brain associated with learning, memory and movement of people who use phones for hours more than 50 per cent are more likely to develop mouth cancer than those who do not talk on them at all.

A major disadvantage of children using mobile phones would be that it can cause cyber bulling through either a mobile phone or a social networking site e.g facebook. It is showing younger children inappropriate language and encouraging them to do things they shouldn’t be doing. It can cause bullying where it can make children get upset and worked up about someone calling them names or threatening them. Facebook can be dangerous because of paedophiles and stalkers and this has become well known. Research has shown that parents are unaware of how much danger their son or daughter is in. More than a quarter of children aged 8 – 11 put intensely personal details about themselves online. Teenagers post a large amount of details about themselves e.g where they live and what school they attend. This is very risky as you have no idea who could be looking at this. Social networking sites can also become addictive which is not good for people’s health by being on it constantly.
However, there are some advantages of having facebook. It’s easy to contact your friends, share photo’s with family or friends from all over the world. It helps eliminate distance between your friends.
Social networking sites have now also been prone to affect childrens education due to the fact they are constantly on them instead of doing something educational like reading. Because they are on social sites to much they forget to do homework or if they do their homework, they are not concentrating because there mind is too focused on what is going on elsewhere. This is probably the main reason why schools block them.

Social networking sites can also cause problems with people hacking into others profiles and writing things to other people causing problems between others. They can cause a lot of arguments because you aren’t actually arguing with them face to face which means people say more than what they would really say face to face.

One advantage of social networking is that it is free to use and is cheaper than texting someone constantly, especially for a work situation where you need to send big long emails and can just do it via the internet. Also, it can be good for if you run a business as you can advertise and create pages for your business to become well known.

A main disadvantage would be that if your making new friends on facebook, you never know who they could be. They could be anyone pretending to be someone else and having a fake profile, provoking you for information about yourself and this is how facebook can become dangerous. When they eventually find out that they aren’t the same person, they become so scared, watching every step they take. Knowing someone may be watching you is something that I would definitely be scared off.

People can also become addicted to it which makes everything worse. It’s encouraging children to become lazier, stopping them from going out and interacting with the real world. However they can help with organizing and arranging plans.
Overall it’s seems to be that social networking sites seem to have more of a negative impact than a positive one. Doing this discursive essay has shown that both mobile phones and social networking sites are a health hazard more than anything and has more of an impact on people than I thought. It has also made me feel more cautious about what I’m doing on these sites and how often I’m using them.