Virtually yours!
Increasing popularity of social networking sites, especially among teens, is a concern for parents

By Shubhdarshani Mitra
New Delhi, August 21: Sayani (name changed) and her friends can’t stay without accessing the social networking sites, of which they are members, at least once in a day! Some even head to the cyber café only to check their accounts and interact with their ‘virtual’ friends. All of them are minors who have misquoted their age to become members of various social networking sites.

How active are you socially? Well, if the answer to this simple question does not include the inclusion of social networking sites, chances are that your Social Quotient or SQ, which is a measure of your social skills, will be taken as low. Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Linkedin etc, there is more than one site to take care of once you get to know about these sites. And there exists no scope for those who remain outside this online version of socialising, is what the young users feel!

Parents and guardians might be trying hard to make youngsters realise that at their age there is no need to get hooked on to social media like this. The friends’ lists of these youngsters are those whom they meet in school or their friends who can be reached out easily. Still, they are getting into transient friendships which can cause trouble because of the emotions involved.

The youngsters say that such communities and sites at times bring together like-minded people and so there can be a healthy exchange of information.

“I am a part of a community which has various book clubs, groups like favorite band etc and we keep getting mails, blogs and other pieces of information on the topics we like. I check my mails, read pieces and forward them to my friends. There is a Harry Potter fan club as well. I came to know about it through my friends. A number of them are a part of sites like facebook, orkut etc,” says Sayani, who doesn’t want to reveal the site’s name because she feels she is the only member from India and wants to retain the exclusivity.

The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales recently expressed his concern over transient friendships that are rampant on the internet. Social networking sites and communities on the internet like Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Twitter etc have members with friends list running from hundreds to the thousands. He says that people should go out and make friends instead of getting hooked on to the internet and mobile.

However, the other side of the story backed by the users themselves is that such sites are a strong networking tool. Especially, they help a lot in an academic set up where students can interact with a bigger group.

Rakesh Kankanala, IInd year student, IIM-L says: “The social networking groups act as strong networking tools. They serve multiple purposes. They act as a networking tool when a person is joining IIM-L and gets to interact with the senior batches as well as his own batch mates. They act as a strong networking tool when a person passes out of IIM-L and also helps the alumni to be in touch with the current batches on campus. They keep the entire IIM-L family aware of the events and developments on the campus and provides a platform to all the batches of IIM-L to come on a single platform and interact with people at different positions in different industries.”

Those in favour of such social networking sites say it’s a brilliant platform to connect with people and an amazing way to de-stress. One can put up as a status message what’s on their mind, can share pictures, can comment on other people’s profile, create communities, paste blog IO, take quizzes — there is no end to fun when it comes to accessing social networking sites. But beware! It could also become an addiction as you are inquisitive to know what your friends are up to at a particular point of time.

There are clubs and forums that are open to the users. They could be association based like clubs/communities of a class or college etc or interest based like those related to poetry or a particular celeb/book/movie/series etc. There is a huge pool of such clubs and communities that one can become a member of and come across people having similar mindset.

The number of users or members of these networking sites is increasing by the day and it’s a competition between the sites in terms of figures. There is a huge pool of information that is available to the users because of these sites as members keep posting and updating information.

According to a research on social media if Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia. And as per the same research more than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

China has banned Facebook and violent online games to be advertised. According to the Guardian, UK, China has an estimated 400,000 facebook users who are now banned to access the site. And in India the number goes to 3.75 million, which is 388 per cent more since the past one year.

However, as per reports of ViziSense which is into online audience measurement and analytics, Orkut is the most popular social networking site in India followed by Facebook, which has over seven million members. Bharatstudent.com, ibibo.com and LinkedIn are next in line.