Effect of Social Networking

“I’ve been really busy lately, all the time, couldn’t even get time to have lunch properly… You see first I have to update my morning status on Facebook, then the daily wall photo that I upload.. And yesterday, the projector caught fire in the class while our teacher was telling us something, so I had to update that too… What a hectic schedule right!!!” That wasn’t me, that was any normal guy you’ll see today… harsh but true, our youth is really influenced by this social networking these days.

Long time ago I heard that joke where the priest asks the bride is she’s friends on Facebook with the groom and then declares them man and wife and says “now you may poke the bride… And hey, tag me in the pictures”. That time I laughed because it was funny, now I laugh coz I guess soon it will be true. And so will be the joke where the father tells his son the love story of him and his wife, and starts with “it all started with a poke” A few years back, it was Orkut and MySpace and kids thought they were trendy… but then a guy who btw was pissed off with his girlfriend got drunk and made this social disaster err.. revolution..! If we look at the stats, Facebook has around 800 million (i.e. 80 crore) users and on an average, every user has 130 friends (I wonder if average people in real life even know that many) talking about the not-so-micro blogging site, Twitter, it is accessed by a 360 million people and an average of 55 million tweets are sent every day.

We all believe Eminem is the best rapper and some even like Justin beiber (I said some!!), why is it? Well a simple reason given by a person who hasn’t listened to both is, both have around 40 million fans on Facebook!!!

I remember when a friend of mine said this, “Initially it was a way to find your old friends, then it became a way to remain in touch with your current friends, now it’s becoming a way to improve your business, love life, friendship etc etc, and soon it will become a way to live life.

” Seeing the trends, I don’t see that time far when we’ll see diseases like ASDOUF (A Syndrome Due to Over Use of Facebook) and ATS (Acute Twitter Syndrome) would be a bigger problem than AIDS.

It’s not that I don’t like those websites, infact these websites are now the biggest way to spread viral messages for constructive use… but now I think about those two things once some big people said

“Social networking sites do keep people updated, but I would have liked it better if DoorDarshan did that job” And “if we make an event on Facebook to kill kasab publically, will he kill himself or will it bother the govt.?”

Frankly, the first one is right and the answer to second one is NO!!! When the govt. isn’t bothered by famous spokespersons and newspaper articles, what is Facebook gonna do to them. Here is why I think Social Networking is spreading speedily.

These days every company has their Facebook/myspace page and a twitter profile to keep the fans updated… many companies check the Facebook and linkedIn profile of a person before recruiting him/her as an employee… having an email id is just as necessary as getting a small pox vaccine when you’re born… success of a venture highly depends on your page popularity… even in general youth, the person who gets the most likes on his status and profile picture is considered famous. From books to hooks, from brands to friends, you can buy anything to everything on Facebook! Now that google Plus is here, people who felt like real dudes while playing call of duty, remember their old days as they play Mario and angry birds!! So it’s upto you, social networking is just like salt, important and tastes good when limited… overuse is harmful!

Written by – Shubham Choudhary

Photograph from Google