Over the years more and more people have been signing up for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and are enjoying the fact that they can communicate with anyone from anywhere without paying a single penny. Businesses have also started using social media to connect and communicate with their costumers worldwide and promote their products and brand, many business gurus have said that social media is the best way to promote and grow your business or brand.
Those the good things about social media but what about the bad things? Well if you do your research you would know that one of the biggest problems that comes with social media is cyber bullying. Statistics show that about 42% of children and young adults have been bullied whilst being online, many people wonder why cyber bullying is so popular among bullies and the reason for this is simple, the bully never has to say anything to their victims face and some sites even allow them to post anonymously so their victim doesn’t know who they are being bullied by. I have always hated bullying and I believe that cyber bullies are cowards, I have always said to anyone that if they have something to say to me or about me then they should say it to my face. Cyber bullies use the fact that they are behind a computer screen and a keyboard to say absolutely disgusting things to people.
See, social networking isn’t as safe and amazing as some people like to think it is. That’s another issue that has been raised recently, the fact that not everyone knows a lot about their privacy settings and tend to ignore them which leaves them open to things like hackers. Lots of people think that because you have to approve a friend request on Facebook that it is private and that no one can contact them without being on their friends list. This is completely false and misleading, if you don’t adjust your privacy settings then anyone can write on your wall and even gain access to your personal information like your email address, your phone number and sometimes even your real address! I know it’s a scary thought and it sounds like I am trying to scare you away from social networking sites but that is not the case, I am just pointing out some of the avoidable dangers of social networking sites. Notice I said AVOIDABLE dangers.
If you don’t know a lot about your privacy settings and things like that then get your parent/guardian or a tech savvy friend to do it for you but make sure it is a friend you trust otherwise they could pretend that it is all safe and be lying and because they know more about it than you, you would take their word for it.
However, social networking is fun and really useful for bloggers like me and businesses owners because it allows us to promote our blog/business to everyone around the world which gives us traffic to our sites and possible new costumers. Just remember to be safe and think about the things you put online, I have Facebook and Twitter and neither of them have my address or phone number on there so only people I know in the real world can contact me.
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