Social Networking Sites

The world we live in runs on communication. There is a well known saying that where there is communication, there is a world. A letter sent from one district to another once took weeks to arrive. Today the same message reaches the other side of the country in a second, and it does not travel alone: a photograph, a video and a recorded voice travel with it. The tool that brought this change is the group of social networking sites that run on the internet.

These sites brought people closer, made news travel fast and opened a wide door to learning. They also brought new dangers along with them. So a student today needs to understand what these sites are, how they work, how to use them well and where to be careful.

A social networking site is also known as social media. These are places on the internet where a person can write what they think, put up photographs and videos, look at what others have put up and reply to it. People who share an interest gather there and a community forms around that interest.

The best known examples are Facebook, Messenger, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, TikTok and the blog. They do not all do the same work. One carries mostly written words, another carries photographs, another carries video and another carries short messages. In Nepal the number of Facebook and Twitter users grows day by day.

Every social network brings both gain and harm. Used well, it gives a great deal; used badly, it causes many kinds of damage. The tool is the same in both cases. What changes the result is the way it is used.

The word blog is the short form of web log. A blog is an online journal or an informative website on which one writer, or a group of writers, shares their own thoughts on a subject of their choice. A blog began life as a personal diary, but at present there are more than 570 million blogs on the web.

The blog is no longer only for personal use. It has spread widely into business, politics and social life. In business a blog matters a great deal, because its main purpose there is to connect the goods a company makes with the customers who buy them. Good blogging makes a business more trustworthy. A blog has to be brought up to date again and again, because readers stop returning to a blog whose writing never changes.

A blog sits on the web, and yet it is not the same thing as an ordinary website. Compared with a blog, a website is fixed in nature. The comparison below separates the two.

Opening a blog does not call for deep technical knowledge. An email address, a computer or mobile phone joined to the internet, and the patience to follow the steps below in order are enough.

• Open the Chrome browser on a computer or a mobile phone and search for blogger.com.
• Then click on Create on your Blog.
• Click on Publish your passion, your way, go inside Create your blog and start building a good looking blog.
• For the Google sign in, put in the email address and the password.
• Press enter for the blog's title and put in the title.
• Go to Choose a name for your blog and choose the name of the blog.
• Then go to Choose a URL for your blog and press next. If the URL you typed is not available, it can be changed.
• After the URL, go to the address and confirm it, or confirm the display name. For this, enter the same name that was given as the title.
• Then click on finish. The blog account is ready, and thoughts can now be posted on it.

Because of social media, news and communication now reach almost everywhere. Nearly every country in the world has been drawn into it. People in villages and people in cities alike gather on these networks. Used in the right way, social media can be a powerful means of communication for the whole world.

• (a) Strong medium: Social media is not only a place to share personal sorrow, trouble and joy. It has also become a meeting ground for serious debate. In recent times it has appeared as a strong medium for election campaigns and for setting the agenda of public discussion. So today a social network is a strong medium through which a person can express what they think.
• (b) Brand development: Through social media a user can get information about any business directly and personally. This helps the business owner towards success. People in many kinds of trade are also seen advertising their goods through social media.
• (c) Customer interaction: In business, the good responses left by some customers can encourage other customers, while the critical responses point out the weak places in the business and show the owner the way to improve.

No technology is only a blessing. Every one of them carries a curse as well, and social media is no exception. In recent times many of its bad effects have come to light. Alongside its popularity, a number of dangers and risks have grown out of it.

A person who uses social media too much runs the risk of falling into mental illness. Depression and the inability to sleep are the problems seen most often in such people.

The blue light that comes out of the screen of a mobile phone or a computer stops the body from making melatonin, the hormone that controls our body clock. Melatonin is what makes us feel sleepy. When its production is blocked we stay awake until late at night, and a body that does not sleep properly falls into many kinds of health problem.

• (b) Fake accounts: An account is opened in the name of some well known person, friend requests are then sent out to as many people as possible, and unfair advantage is taken of the trust those people place in that name. Some people also use Facebook and Twitter to spread spam and malware in the same way.
• (c) Confidential information leak: Here an employee of a company uses social media in an unofficial way to make technical information public, and because of that the company's secret information passes outside.
• (d) Targeted phishing attack: A targeted phishing attack is used to steal money or secret information. Cyber bullying is one example of the harm that comes with it.

In a phishing attack the criminal sends a message that looks as though it came from a bank, a school or a known friend, and in it asks for a password, account details or money. A person who believes it and sends the details loses both the information and the money. In cyber bullying, someone is insulted, mocked or threatened on the network again and again until they are badly hurt in mind.

• With your teacher's help, open a blog on the school computer or on a parent's mobile phone, and post on it a thought of your own or a short piece of writing.
• Open the school computer or a parent's smart phone. Among the social networking sites on it, choose YouTube, go to the search menu, type NCED Virtual and press OK. Videos of virtual classes for different grades and different subjects appear. Open the video of the subject you need and watch it.
• Hold a group discussion with your classmates about the dangers that can arise on a social network, the care that has to be taken against them and the gains the network brings, then present what the group concluded on chart paper.