Positive and Negative Impact of Social Media on the Internet

This report discusses the positive and negative aspects of social media on the internet, challenges and measures of security and privacy, and compares and contrasts the features and applications of two social media platforms.

Individual
Report

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Positive and negative aspects of social media on internet..........................................................1
Challenges and measures of security and privacy.......................................................................2
Compare and contrast features and application of the two social media platform.....................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Professional skills are those skills which are not taught but are acquired by the individual
for personal and professional development performance in a positive manner. There are
involving a different kind of skills of leadership, management of a project, observing, dispute
management etc. In present time digital activities increase rapidly and every people connect with
emerging technology in order to share information quickly (Anders, 2018). To stay in the digital
world require to adopt several skills to deal with different challenges and get effective outcomes.
In the digital age, the internet plays an essential role that provides various types of opportunities
to individual and also provides opportunities like sharing information, transfer file, easily
communication etc. In this report consist of the impact of social media on the internet in a
positive and negative manner. Along with identifying challenges related to security and privacy
are taken into consideration. Additionally, different features and application of different social
media platform are also defined.
MAIN BODY
Positive and negative aspects of social media on internet
Social Media: It is a technology which creates an interaction network where users all
around the world may interact freely with each other sharing information, ideas, creative and
innovative content. It crosses all boundaries which are set by different nations and allows
connectivity between different people 24*7. It can be accessed by using different types of
electronic media such as smartphone, tablet, laptop and computer. There are defined positive and
negative impact of social media on internet:
Positive Impact
Social Media helps in enhancing connectivity between people all over the world by
bridging the gap created by distances. Through it friends sitting thousands of kilometres away
from each other can contact each other easily. Nowadays, social media is also an important
component for business strategies because organisations need to do publicity of their products
online to make sure that their customers know them (Ashraf, 2018). As a result it shows positive
impact on internet and people more consume it in positive manner. It is connecting students and
teachers thereby facilitating e-learning. Also, news can be readily accessed by using it which
helps in staying in touch with outside world. It can be used for planning different types of events
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and contribution for noble causes like charity as it carrier with it the power of mobilising.
Furthermore, it helps business enterprises in growing a client base which helps them in long-run.
It also helps organisations in finding the right talent by providing employment opportunities to
all thereby helping both the employees and employers. It creates awareness by making people
aware about what is happening in their surroundings. It helps in building communities by
bringing together people of a particular religion together to help them learn more about it. It also
enables higher rate of return on investment and facilitates brand awareness of big brands among
people. Thus, if used wisely it can be of a great help to different type of users on internet having
varied needs and requirements (Barak, 2017).
Negative Impact
Social Media can create anxiety-related issues for different people which can create
problems for them. Cyberbullying is also a common problem which many users face involving a
person taking undue advantage of another one. It sets the standards very high for some people
resulting in problem of unrealistic expectations. Furthermore, it generates a lot of fake news and
rumours resulting in them spreading very fast among different people. Also, there are many
people who are addicted to it which has a negative impact on their health. It creates an issue like
Time Management and many people find it very difficult to manage their time due to it. Privacy
issues are also there as privacy of many users is hurt by using it because their information can be
accessed very easily. Data leak is also an issue as the data containing confidential information is
accessible to hackers who indulge in wrong practices. It also exposes children of young age to
content which is not appropriate for their age. Also, health issues are being faced by some people
like sleeping disorder due to spending too much time on social networking sites. It also impacts
self-esteem of certain users because sometimes inappropriate language can be used on it.
Challenges and measures of security and privacy
Currently time online social networks are gaining popularity due to increasing users on a
different application that provides various facilities of effective communication, transfer data &
resources etc. People using blogs to share their personal experience, thoughts, locations, views
and their knowledge in regard to different topics (Denami, 2016). These social sites provide
many opportunities with issues & challenges that connected with the management of social
identity as they compromise with their social privacy. Through social networking tools discuss
the changes at both level professional and personal level. Due to this, the users of such platforms
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are more uncovered to different threats connected with privacy and security. There are discussed
different challenges that classified into modern and classical threats such as:
Classical Threats: These types of threat connected with the activity of personal
information of the users that transfer and share by people to other people through an online
sharing network. Along with it targets the information of the employees through adjustment and
cooperating with several private attributes. There are mentioned some threats like:
 Malware: It is defined as malicious software that has aimed to login into the system of
user and access all the private information that kept by them in a particular folder
(Donohue and Schomburg, 2017). Through this software easily done in the set framework
by online social networks. It is easy to understand in comparison with others in regard to
online services. This software enters into social sites and attacks on account in which the
credentials of the users are accessed as well as managers are sent to their connections
through impersonating them. Such as, the Koobface malware is one that gets spread on
different platforms like Twitter, Facebook and many others. The main aim of hackers to
collect personal information of users.
 Spam Attacks: The Spam message are known as unwanted messages which are appearing
on the account of social media sites. Due to spam messages user face, various problems
and these are presenting various advertisements as well as links that are linking with the
malware sites. For this attack, hackers can create a fake profile and continue messaging.
Due to different filtration formulation are utilised so that they can be perceived before
they meet the targeted system.
Modern Threats: In these types of threats concentrating on the collection of private
information and data in regard to user and people linked with them. There are defined some
modern attacks such as:
 Fake profiles: It is the most common attack in which hacker can create a fake profile with
fake information and try to connect with people. After request acceptance, they can easily
accessed information easily and use it for personal work by the online social network. It
can be used by them for spam messages. As a result, it creates a problem for service
providers due to leads and misuse of bandwidth (EL-Daou, 2016).
 Inference Attacks: It is linked with the sensitive information where hackers attack
sensitive information like age, gender, political associate etc. For this attack, people use
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machine learning algorithm are utilised which is then connected with the publicly
available data. This type of attack is conducted by people on mutual friend basis and
gathering all sensitive information of the user and their co-workers.
 Surveillance: This social media surveillance connected with observing the activities of a
person on different social media platforms. There is analysing the social roles of people
which is mainly based on the relationship with others and their profile.
As per the above threats require to arrange effectively otherwise its impact on the privacy as well
as security of the users can be assured. There is required to manage different challenges through
precautionary measures and through different front line defence which is build up and arranged
by the online social network (Gazi, 2016). The measures that can be taken to assure about the
privacy and safety of the users are:
 Privacy Setting: To assure about the safety of personal information the individual require
to focus on the privacy setting. An individual must assure about the privacy and set their
privacy setting to fewer chances of leak information by another person from different
sources. For this, a user keeps on progressive their account and change their passwords on
a monthly basis and set customise services in the privacy setting.
 Antivirus and Anti spyware: The antivirus used by users to identify viruses that enter into
system and applications and protecting the information that is sorted in the system.
Through these two software, the unauthorised access can be protected through countering
them.
 Third-party application: As per the third party application different privacy and security
measures can be taken easily which have various that are multitude with outsider online
social network and control user application.
Compare and contrast features and application of the two social media platform
Social media are the websites and applications which enables the people to
communication and sharing of information, ideas, interest or any other form of expression
virtually. Advancement in social media platforms helps people to stay connected with each other
without any respect to their distance. Some majorly use social media are- Facebook, twitter,
LinkedIn, Instagram, whatsapp, you Tube, We-chat, Pinterest, snapchat, viber and so forth. The
social media sites that are progressively being used are Facebook and Twitter that supports them
in acquiring their objectives of using social media (Gokhale and Machina, 2018).
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Facebook - It is an American online social media application. It was founded by Mark
Zuckerberg, 2004. This social media platform allows people to interact with each other. On
Facebook people make their profiles, upload photos, videos, send messages, can do calls and
video calls, get in touch with friends, colleagues and family. Facebook is easily accessible to all
as a person only needs a good network and computer or smartphone to connect at it. The people
are attracted towards it because of its feature offered. Facebook offers features of news feed
where people upload their posts like photos, videos, news or any status update. People their also
send friend request to others to make connections (Gonen Sharon and Lev-Ari, 2016). It also has
a feature of timeline where any person can go through the profile to other to know more about
them. Besides this people can also react to others posts with likes and comments. The best
feature of this application to being increasingly used by all the people all over the world that
supports in connecting them to other people.
Twitter: Twitter was created by jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Ecan Williams,
march 2006. It has more than 25 offices around the world. As of 2018, it had more than 321
million active users. It is an American micro blogging and social networking platform where
people interact via tweets. Tweets are the messages the user posts into his profile upon which
the other people can react by liking, commenting and even by sharing of posts. The users are
attracted towards this application from its features. Its a platform which focuses more on sharing
opinions of individual, any user can pin a tweet permanently, even they can download, at that
platform people write and share their views and perceptive about topic.
Comparison between the two: Facebook is a common platform which is using by
businesses, universities, individuals. It is helping them ineffective interaction, teaching,
promoting and learning things. On the other side, Twitter is used by people for presenting such
things. Both applications are synonym and depended on a particular concept that is too easily
accessible, provide communication, flexible etc. In a comparison of Twitter, Facebook is more
famous among people as the features are quite simple and easily uploaded pictures, animations
and different related apps. While, Twitter have limited features that are offered by people to
attract, highlight text with hyperlinks. When compare both platforms of social media so it is
observed that Twitter offers only micro blogging services but Facebook more than these services
(Jones and Seybold, 2016).
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The contrast between the two: Differentiating among the two is significantly a difficult
task as they exist a huge versatility among the two. In present time Twitter adds more new
feature to become famous and increase user. With several apps of Twitter-like Twitpic allows the
users to upload their pictures on Twitter account. It is required to compare and contrast between
two sites and the main differences among them are based on the method of communication in
which people meet with each other. In Facebook people interact with those people who know
them on the other side on Twitter people link them more and more people whom they don't know
even. These two social media platforms are different from each other but are used by the users
simultaneously (Kafyulilo, Fisser and Voogt, 2016).
As per the above discussion, it is saying that social media plays a significant role in
communication and interaction with other people. It is a useful platform which is utilised people
for business activities through marketing and branding with its use it is becoming an important
part of the life of a person. It is a good platform for the businessmen for connecting with
different types of customers and aware them for the products and services At this stage, they are
applying different types of advertising tool and transformed the way in order to communicate
with customers. It is a cost-effective way where compare different methods such as online
marketing, emails, messages etc. Along with different blogs and tweets of a company tries to
make the business efficient as they can make the right decision, feedbacks and assistance and
many more. As per the researcher, it is analysed that these social media sites are becoming an
effective platform for communication (Raish and Rimland, 2016).
CONCLUSION
As per the above discussion, it has been concluded that digital work increase day by day
and everyone become part of this world. There are conducting different types of activities and
social media is the most important part of this world. In this society each and every person part
of these sites where they create own account and connect with people across the countries. Every
person uses these sites with particular purpose like businessmen are using to promote their
products & services, individual uses it to communicate with each other. Moreover, it is
concluded that these sites face many challenges, threats that are faced by a person that is linked
with the loss of private information. Along with tackle these challenges through antivirus, anti-
spyware and many more.
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