You all might be shocked by reading the title – Disadvantages of Social Media...where whole world is enjoying the benefits of social media, its disadvantages are really shocking. But this is seriously an emerging issue. We all are using it to the max without thinking about its negative results. According to me the major disadvantages of social media sites are-
Data Insecurity & Wrong Utilization-
A large number of data is present on all the social media sites. Knowingly and unknowingly we all are pouring each and every information whether personal or not onto the online media platforms. This creates an opportunity for the hackers to collect the secret information and use it in an illegal manner which is very harmful to the innocent users like you and me.
We all have shared so many personal moments like beautiful snaps and videos with our friends on social media sites and the hackers then capture these or where ever they get the personal information to block our account or something else. Mostly celebrities and popular persons are affected by this. Twitter, Facebook account hijacking is very common now a days, where there is no data security and as a result hijackers defame the common people by creating fake information.
It is a very general tendency to open every link on twitter and sometimes those links take us to the malicious or porn sites, which is illegal and harmful for the teenagers.
Personal Information theft is another disadvantage of social media sites. These sites are filled with some secret information like SSN, mail id, cell phone number, home address, family status and some more information. All these information are sometimes necessary to share and sometime not depending on the type of social media accounts. So the theft varies from site by site. By gaining information hackers either do the robbery or can block the accounts or start populating our accounts with illegal sites, unwanted links, etc.
Impact on Brand Reputation-
The data safety and security part becomes more significant for companies. Almost each and every second companies are having their presence on social media sites. So they have shared some crucial data over there and apart from hacking of their accounts another possibility of damage would be onto the brand reputation of company. The goodwill or reputation of the brand is a very important thing to maintain. Hackers hack the information and run the account as per their own requirement. Either they leak the information to others or start generating some fake data on the internet about the company which at the end of the day is very dangerous. Wikileaks is a very common example of data theft & wrong utilization.
Time Wastage-
Another disadvantage which I can see is wastage of time. Kids going to school, teenagers going to college are spending most of their time in chit chatting with their friends, playing online games onto the social media sites. FB, twitter etc sites are in some way or the other is a type of addiction. We share each and every minute information over there like- Out of town.., Its so boring here.., Going for a date, etc.
So do you think that we should share such type of information? Why can’t we take our too much personal life away from social media sites. And with the increase of usage of social media sites most of the time we shared those things which are not there...with this I mean we pretend to become what we are not. And all this is done just in order to gain more attention and more comments. But do you really think it is feasible & right way to present ourself ? In my personal view this is wrong. Using these sites for entertainment for 2-3 hours is not wrong but using it 4-5 hours per day on the cost of studies/life is seriously a big problem. To have a social media account is now a days considered as a status symbol but excess of every thing is always harmful.
Hence my question is when there are large number of people who are using social media sites either for business purpose or something else where is the assurance of data safety and security? How to stop the leakage of information? What is the way to keep away the hackers? And what about the precious time which we are wasting on social media sites in simply knowing what our friends or a particular person is doing? Just give a thought to it and then use social media sites. If we use the social media sites effectively and efficiently it is a boon but if not it is a curse to the society....
Heena Lodha
The author is a business researcher with CheckBuzz, a social media monitoring company.
About CheckBuzz : A Social Media Monitoring Company, which tells brands/corporates what bloggers, journalists, powerful consumers, or even ordinary people are saying about them. Having a healthy experience of 3+ years, this company gives its solutions on Social media consulting, Social media marketing and Social media monitoring.
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