For the last five years, I have been a regular user of social networking and actively maintained both MySpace and Facebook accounts. I have used the accounts to develop my reputation at the university and become famous. Everyone knows that a promoted account on social media can benefit both a famous soccer player and a college student. Through MySpace, I could demonstrate my success to the followers by posting images of my trophies and football events, in which I participated. In fact, MySpace allowed me to inform all my family, friends, and acquaintances about my achievements. I also managed to catch the attention of people, whom I did not even know, and earn a fanatical following. However, one day, I did a self-evaluation; and realized that most relations that I maintained through the social networking were superficial and non-dependable. I also realized that my activities in the social networking sites were a thief of time that distracted me from the academic work. In this introspection, I could not find even an iota of a positive contribution that MySpace made into my campus life or relationships. It only wasted my time, energy, and resources. I believe it has been the cause for my dismal academic performance since the first year up to the end of the third year. Stepping into my final year, I signed out of the MySpace account. Consequently, I could direct all my time and efforts to the studies, without getting sidetracked to seeking people’s opinions on the social media. Though the social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are important in the business promotions and communication with friends and family, they distract most active users from the productive activities. For this reason, people are losing more than they are benefiting from the use of social networking technologies.
MySpace allows its users to create the web-profiles, in other words, pages for posting personal images, expressing own opinions, and communicating with other people through their profiles. Chris DeWolf and Tom Anderson designed MySpace in 2003. It primarily served as a social networking site that offered musicians a platform for promoting their music and building their brand image. Here, the users can connect with the old friends and meet new people or potential romantic partners. After the creation and success of MySpace, another social networking, Facebook, was designed.
Facebook came hot on the heels of MySpace as the next player in the social networking world. It was a creative invention by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes; the young men were the students at Harvard University at the time of design. They launched the site in 2004; at first, Facebook was preserved for the prestigious universities only such as Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. Facebook functions the same way as MySpace does. The users create profiles, search for the new friends, communicate with the family, upload photos, post comments, and build romantic relationships. With the help of a timeline in Facebook, the users can post their opinions while their friends post messages to the posted ideas. The users can alert their friends about their personal information such as current location, relationship status, educational status, and family information. The timeline informs the users when their friends make any changes in their profiles and statuses. Organizations can also create own Facebook accounts and send the followers alerts on their activities. Today, Facebook is a leading social networking site in the world. In 2014, it had one billion users with more than half of the members accessing their accounts daily.
The first reason for why people are losing more than they are gaining through the use of social networking technologies is its potential addictive effect on certain types of personality. A group of psychologists conducted a study on the addictive behaviors in the users of the social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The participants of the study were young people aged between 15 and 25 years. The research used four groups of traits in order to define addiction. The first trait was salience. The people from this group said that the first thing they do every morning is checking an internet connection and logging into a social networking site. The second trait was loss of control. The people in this group could not control their use of the social networking sites. The third trait was withdrawal. The people in this group claimed that they felt lost if they could not access a social networking site. The results of the study indicated that the extroverts and individuals, who are not conscientious, are the personality types that the addictive nature of the social networking sites affects the most. The reason behind this trend is that the extroverts may excessively rely on the social networking sites because this interactive experience meets their needs in social interaction and stimulation. On the other hand, the unconscionable people usually lack self-control. The average number of visiting the social networking sites for all the types of personality were four days a week, on which they logged for ten times, on the average. The researchers concluded that the excessive use of the social networking sites resulted in the poor time management, sedentary behavior, procrastination, and poor organizational skills. The study clearly revealed that the use of Facebook and MySpace was reducing the productivity of the participants.
The second reason that proves the idea that people are losing more than they are gaining is because the social networking sites contribute to the psychological disorder of narcissism. Weiss experimented with one hundred undergraduate students aged 18-26 years, who allowed the researcher to look through their Facebook pages. He also studied the students individually in the lab settings where they completed a Narcissism Personality Inventory (N.P.I.). Narcissism is a personality trait reflecting a grandiose and inflated self-concept. He found that social networking sites, for example, Facebook and MySpace, offer a platform for self-promotion such as self-descriptions, uploading photos taken from the high-end areas, and building large number of superficial relationships. In the book, The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, Howard Gardener and Katie Davis argue, “Social media users have a packaged sense self that is glammed-up and rose-colored.” The users seek to earn a large number of likes and comments on their new updates such as personal opinions and photos. The users that have a large number of followers and friends get extremely proud of their ability to attract an enormous following. Chest-thumping and self-admiration caused by self-promotion through social networks are the potential threats that contribute to narcissism. One of the downsides associated with the trait of narcissism is the inclination to the short-term and non-committal relationships. In such a manner, the users of the social networking technologies engage in relationships that lack the basic qualities of commitment, closeness, empathy, and emotional warmth. In the long-run, individuals with the narcissistic personality suffer adverse consequences. The narcissistic people are overly aggressive, have a lower level of commitment, are constantly in need of psychological control, have an obsession for game playing and report high rates of infidelity. As a rule, individuals with these characteristics cannot maintain healthy relationships. Even if they engage in relationships, they inflict psychological suffering to the partner. Therefore, the social networking technologies contribute to the development of the narcissistic psychological disorders. It is another negative result caused by the use of the social networking technology.
In addition, the social networking technologies have increased sexual abuse of the minors. This websites provides criminals with a platform for sexual molestation of the underage youth; consequently, the minors’ vulnerability to sexual victimization increases significantly. Sax conducted a study on the sexual abuse and found out that about 95 percent of victims in the Internet-related sex crimes were between the ages of thirteen to seventeen years old. There were no reports of such cases in children aged younger than twelve years. Today, many sexual offenders use Facebook and MySpace to locate, entice, and sexually abuse the minors. One popular trend that the technologies of social networking facilitate is the blind date. A criminal can identify the personal details of the minors through their profiles. He or she then engages them in a relationship. First, a criminal changes personal details in the profile and sets a younger age; then, he or she invites the minors for a date. The social networking sites provide the criminals with a broad access to vulnerable victims while enabling them to hide their identity. As a rule, the minors easily divulge personal information to the strangers in the social media. The increased rate of sexual abuse in a child caused by social networking is another adverse effect of these technologies.
Online sexual molestation affects not only the minors but also the youths in the equal measures. Social networking inhibits the healthy romantic relationships and sexual development of a person, making even the mature individuals vulnerable to sexual abuse. Technologies of the social networking eliminate the face-to-face relationships among the peers. The face-to-face relationships help young people learn how to handle the decisions and negotiations of romantic intimacy. As a rule, the online romantic relationships take place in the deep secrecy and isolation. The youths do not display these relationships their friends, family members, or any other people. This isolation may make the relationships form hastily, develop with less consultation, but develop greater self-disclosure and intensity. The youths that engage in these relationships are vulnerable to sex crimes. Furthermore, intense sexual and romantic involvement in the early adolescent and teenage usually results in a range of adverse outcomes. It may divert the attention of youths from their main developmental and productive activities such as academic performance.
Cyberbullying and online harassment are other adverse effects of the social networking technologies. In the social networking sites, Cyberbullying comes in the form of sending and receiving threats, spreading rumors, forwarding private messages, and posting embarrassing information about another person. Online harassment occurs when a stranger uses information available in the social networks in order to contact or bully another user. According to the research, 60 percent of the teens claim that they received hurtful messages on their profiles. Further, 45 percent of teens have fallen victims of bullying through the social networking sites. A tragic example of cyberbullying through the social networking technologies was reported in the United States. Megan Meier lost her life in 2006 at the age of 13 years old. She began an online relationship with a stranger in MySpace. Initially, she thought the young man was 16 years old. MySpace account, over which Megan engaged in a relationship, was named Josh. As it turned out later, the mother of a former friend of the Megan’s family had created this profile in order to gain the girl’s trust. Before Megan committed suicide, Josh had sent some hurtful and cruel messages to her MySpace account. The investigators assert that these messages made Megan take her life. Such cases indicate that Facebook and MySpace facilitate the development of the online harassment and cyberbullying.
The technologies of social networking create an environment for deception and other cyber-crimes. However, there are many decent people who use these platforms for useful and constructive activities and do not abuse any laws. Many people use Facebook and MySpace for communicating with their distant relatives and friends. Moreover, social media help shy individuals engage in a face-to-face interaction and open up. However, people should moderate the use of social media communication to prevent it from causing any adverse results. In the book Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self, Dr. Shelly Turkle asserts, “Social networking uptime and adds up a new kind of time to the day, the time of attention sharing, sometimes referred to as continuous partial attention.” The over-use of social media can negatively influence even the well-conditioned and mature people. In the book What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Car wrote, “When we read online, we tend to become ‘mere decoders of information.’ Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.” Even though, many users of the social networking technologies have good intentions, these online platforms create an opportunity for the negative social activities.
The study on the social networking technologies reveals many critical problems. The statistics indicate that the adolescents and young adults are the most vulnerable category of users and suffer the adverse effects of the social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. These platforms create an environment that make less conscientious extroverts become addicts to the instant self-affirming and gratifications. When the young users care about how they want other people to perceive them through social networking profiles, they develop narcissistic behaviors that adversely affect the healthy relationships with the peers. Narcissism has a potential to create a false sense of self that dies down within a short time. The excessive use and abuse of the social networking technologies can deter the development of young personalities by interfering with their academic performance, as well as intellectual and emotional maturity. The social sites allow the criminal actions such as online harassment, child sexual abuse, and cyberbullying to spread. Moreover, these technologies make tracing the offenders extremely difficult. A significant importance of the young generation to the nation, society, and family makes it crucial to help them grow in an environment free from these adverse effects. The increasing number of unfavorable consequences associated with the use of the social networking technologies indicate that people are losing more than they are gaining from the technologies

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