Social Media and Its Impact on Group Dynamics

Introduction

Social media have affected the society world over. Nine out of ten users in the United States visit a social website every month. Research statistics show that approximately 4.5 hours or 12% of all the time they spend on the internet is spent on social websites. This time distribution is more visible among youngsters than it is among the middle aged. This increase in trend is also among the elderly who are 55 and above (McDonald, 2004). There are several reasons why youth should be restricted from using the social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Discussion

Social media may be defined as a group of media that have the following characteristics: It encourages participation in that it erases the demarcation among media and its audience. It promotes openness in that sharing of views and information is much easier. It is different from broadcast in that broadcast presents one way views whereas the social media entails two-way communication. It facilitates the formation of communities. Moreover, it offers increased connectedness for businesses (Sun, pp: 49).

Social media have six types. These are as follows:

Social networks - for example, Facebook, Google+, Orkut, Twitter etc.

Blogs - for example, online journals

Wikis - an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia where people can add content and can even make changes to the content available. Wikipedia is the most famous of all the Wikis and has around 2 million articles in English language alone.

Podcasts - subscription based audio and video files. For example, i-tunes by Apple Inc.

Forums - online communities designated for discussion on a topic.

Content communities - for example, Flickr, YouTube, Picasaweb etc. used for uploading videos, photos etc.

Micro blogging - this is a combination of social network and content sharing. For example, twitter

Other types of social media include live casting, social calendaring, social bookmarking and life streams (Lauren, pp: 37).

Social media websites are a risk to children and youth in that they may be misused by others on the website. Befriending someone over the social media sites is very easy. All you have to do is send a friend request and you can friend a person upon approval. Children do not know the importance of becoming friends with only people you know personally. In an attempt to prove themselves very gregarious, many children become friends with people whom they do not even know personally. This is dangerous for children. This danger is reflected in the increase in number of cases where children got exploited over the internet. In worst cases, this exploitation led to child abuse. There are people on the internet who have psychological issues, and join these social networking sites with the motive of finding young children for abuse and exploitation, as they are easy to manipulate. These criminals expose young children to inappropriate and explicit content gradually leading probing them to engage in inappropriate behavior.

Children should be restricted from participation on social websites because it ...