1.
Social Networking and its impact on Youth, Culture,
Communication and Behavior
W.I.DPerera(2010ICT78)
Faculty of Applied Science
Vavuniya Campus
University of Jaffna
imesha.perera@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
In this survey paper, I concluded six research projects on
Social Networking and its impact. The Social Networking
has become increasingly popular components of our
everyday lives in today’s globalized society. They provide
a context where people across the world can communicate,
exchange messages, share knowledge, and interact with
each other seamlessly.
The use of Social Networks is growing at an unprecedented
rate. This is directing us to inspect on its impact on society.
This survey is covering some areas where the social
networking is impacted on. Those are youth, culture,
communication and behaviors.
General Terms
Culture, Globalization, Community, Security, Human
Factors, Languages, Social isolation, Cyber infidelity,
Virtual life, cybercriminals, Facebook addiction, Data
types, Inter Cultural
Keywords
Social Networking Sites(SNS), Facebook, Google+, twitter,
MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, Chat,
Facebook wall
INTRODUCTION1.
The recent years have seen an enormous growth in the
popularity and usage of smartphones, laptops, notebooks
and other ubiquitous computing devices and it increased the
number of internet users. So the people become online
always. And with the recent technological revolution their
lives got busier and the world became a global village. So
they required various ways to communicate with their
colleagues worldwide.
Then they have been introduced this Social Networking
Sites.These are dynamic web-sites where users can create a
profile and connect that profile to others to form an explicit
personal network to meet their friends, to chat, to share
their new life events, to get new job opportunities, to
discuss their day today matters and to entertain them-selves
[1].
Through Social Networking Sites, people can use networks
of online friends and group memberships to keep in touch
with current friends, reconnect with old friends or create
real life friendships through similar interests or groups.
Besides establishing important social relationships, social
media members can share their interests with other
likeminded members by joining groups and forums. Some
networking can also help members find a job or establish
business contacts. Most social media websites also offer
additional features. In addition to blogs and forums,
members can express themselves by designing their profile
page to reflect their personality. This has made
communication between the strangers easier than ever.
Chatting is one of the more popular activities on the Social
Networking Sites where people can talk to anyone across
the world.
The SNSs plays an important role in the lives of many
people in the world now as today 1.5 billion people across
the world have their profiles in social networking sites[4].
People have virtual life rather than their normal life. This is
now almost everywhere and has dramatically altered the
way we live.So it impact significantly on people and their
life styles.
PROBLEM DEFINITION2.
This work aims at understanding social networking and its
impact on society. The first goal is to understand what a
Social Network is and how it has grown up. Further it
intends to conclude current researches on this matter and
their findings like, to which areas this SNS affects, how it
affects and what are the impacts. Lastly this aims to show
future directions of social networking and how the impact
will change in future.

2.
SOCIAL NETWORKING AND ITS3.
IMPACT
3.1 Social Networking and its growth
3.1.1 Social Networking Sites
Social networking site is a type of virtual communication
that allows people to connect with each other. This concept
arises from basic need of human beings to stay together in
groups forming a community.According to Boyd and
Ellison (2007, paragraph. 4) [5] SNS are Web-based
services that allow individuals to
1. Construct a public or semi-public profile within a
bounded system,
2. Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and
3. View and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system.
Early social networking websites included Classmates.com
(1995), focusingon ties with former school mates, and
SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing onindirect ties. User
profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on
afriends list and other members could be sought out who
have similar intereststo the users-which could be found out
from their profiles. Then in 2005 MySpace has introduced
and in 2007 Facebook etc.
The user base of Social Networking siteis no longer
restricted to private end users and collegecommunities [6],
but extends to professionals while servingas collaboration
tools.
In addition, with the various kinds of Social Networking
Sites provide number of services and features.(Table 1*)
The most popular extra features include music and video
sections. The video section can include everything from
member generated videos from hundreds of subjects to TV
clips and movie trailers (You tube). There are features to
play number of games with users around the world.It even
gives income to their users as well as support to promote
their business and so many other features.
3.1.2 Growth of SNSs
The number of devices which has accessibility to the
internet has increased with modern technical revolution
after inventing mobile devices with internet facility and
smartphones.
Due to thissudden increment of internet users, the number
of people who use SNSs has increased. The mobile service
providers also reduced their charges to access internet due
to the higher demand.So the people became highly
available in SNSs by using their mobile devices which
contain social networking services that provide location-
based features andcamera functions, for instance allowing
users to publish theircurrent activity and location. So they
became extra popular.
In less than five years,these sites have grown from a niche
online activity into a phenomenon through which tens of
millionsof internet users are connected, both in their leisure
time, and at work.
Figure 1. Number of Social Network users Worldwide [7]
Figure 2.Percentage of online adult users who use SNSs
3.2 Social Networking and the Community
The Social networking is dawn of a new era as it connects
whole world in one place, let people meet new friends and
offer so many features seamlessly to be available in
anywhere anytime with anybody. So it introduces new
virtual community and virtual life for a single person.
Still SNS cannot necessarily affect our whole society in
huge ways, but they do have the potential to have an
impact. It is better they are used only for good, rather than
to help spread hatred.
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
2012 2013 2014 2015
Number of users in
billions

3.
3.3 Impact on Youth
Social media tools are woven into many young people's
day-to-day lives. Young people are in conversation and
communication with their peer groups using a wide variety
of different media and media devices every day.
10 years ago, young people may have only been in touch
with friends and peer-groups when hanging out at school,
or meeting up in town. Now young people can be touch
through instant messaging, social networks, online games
and many other tools. Young people are growing up in a
constantly connected society[2].This SNSs impact on youth
in both positively and negatively.Social Media might be
sometimes seemed like just a new set of cool tools for
involving youngpeople but the emergence of social media
potentially has a bigger impact than that. It impacts upon
young people who are growing up in an age where media is
not about broadcast content from the TV, but is about
interactivity, multimedia and multi-tasking.The SNSs can
be influenced on youth in different aspects of social life,
political awareness, religious practices, educational
learning, trends adopting, sports activities and so on.
As Social Networking Sites (SNS) plays an increasingly
important role in the lives of many young peopleand
presents them with both opportunities and risks. Many of
the reasons young people mayencounter risks through SNS
have roots outside of the technology, in issues of young
people'spersonal and social development.
Table 1. Main Impacts on Youth
Positive Impacts Negative Impacts
Helping young people
keep in contact with
peers
Bullying
Allowing young people to
develop new contacts
and friendships with
peers
Young people disclosing
personally identifying
information
Sharing information and
media with peers
Abuse and exploitation of
young people
Finding an audience for
creative works
Too much time spend on
the computer / internet
addiction
Providing access to
information
Risks from sexual
predators
Youth can use SNSs in useful ways such as peer groups
need chances tonegotiate and develop shared
understandings. [8] They can use SNSs to gain more
knowledge, they can discuss their matters with other people
around the world, and they will get a chance to have new
educational opportunities. They can meet and associate
different friends in different countries and the SNSs make it
easier for them to,amongst other things: publish creative
works to localand global audiences; stay in touch and
communicatewith peers; find and interact with people with
sharedinterests; organize and co-ordinate
politicalengagement and action; for virtual volunteering;
and to engage in self-expression.
Even if it helps us to find either new/old friend, it has some
drawbacks, becauseit sometimes breaks our privacy and we
really donot know about the realface behind the new
friends and what is their character. The SNS will display all
Disclosed Data into others. So the youth will expose in to
an unsafe society by this. They will face into risks such as
inappropriatecontent; commercialism and unsuitable
advertising;inappropriate or offensive conduct on SNS;
criminalactivities such as identity theft; and
inappropriatecontact (online and offline) from strangers –
which mayinclude grooming and in the most serious cases,
sexual abuse.Social Networking is beneficial for youth in
the field of education, social media deteriorating social
norms, social media is affecting negatively on study of
youth. Social media promotes unethical pictures, video
clips and images among youth.
Most of the young people are addicting to SNSs and it
decreases their talents of hangout with real friends. This is
indirectly caused into social-phobia. They lose time for
physical activities as they spend their leisure time on SNSs.
They are lack of inter-personnel communicational skills
and they are having thefeeling of independence that is
associated with social media where there is no parental
control and also elevation of their social status among the
peers, where one has many followers on the social network.
This will change their attitudes and sometimes they will
lose their connection with family members as they are
wasting time on those sites. It may direct them to unwanted
contents as well as to unwanted affairs.
The fact that social networking sitesarea part of them
especially having been born in this era of emerging
technology, most felt that they could not hangout without
it. So the SNSs can be converted into a key role in
supporting young people to navigate the risks and exploit
theopportunities of online social networking and can
provide space for young people to reflectupon their online
activity, and to develop their ‘media literacy’ and they need
to be trained on better usage of the social networking sites
so as to minimize time wastage on chatting and other
irrelevant engagements that are not of major importance on
their lives.
The socialnetworking sites can provide ways to keep
youngpeople in touch with services and with each other,
tobuild bridges between different groups, and topromote

4.
ongoing collaboration on projects betweenface-to-face
sessions. Social network sites canprovide a platform for
sharing young people’s creativeefforts, or for enabling
young people to have a publicvoice on issues that affect
them. Online socialnetworking also offers the potential for
new forms ofonline outreach work or for working with
groups withshared interests from across a wide
geographical area.However, the access to technology, and
the skills and knowledge base that will allow youth
toperform this important informal education role is not yet
widespread.
3.4 Impact on Culture
Cultural differences influence communication, behavior,
and values. “There aredifferences in the way that people
who identify with different cultures, based on both
nationalidentity and gender, manage their communicative
behaviors within SNSs [social network sites]”(Rosen et. al,
2010).While cultures around the world value their
individual traditions, beliefs, and norms thatmake them
unique, social media links people around the world
regardless of differences andgeographical boundaries.
According to Chen and Zhang (2010), “The compression of
time andspace, due to the convergence of new media and
globalization, has shrunk the world into a muchsmaller
interactive field.” People across the globe can interact with
each other within seconds ofsending and receiving
messages. New social networking concept has brought
people from different culturestogether in the “global
village.”
The people use social media to learnabout the other
countries, establish and maintain relationships, and stay
informed with events intheir friends countries and if they
are in a foreign country they can be updated on both host
country and home country situations. Communication and
interaction are key factors that influence how social media
impacts cultural. By using SNSs people are able to map the
culture entails comparing their ownculture to another and
examining the similarities and differences. Then they will
learn some practices of other cultures. This will improve
the mutual understanding within multiple national people.
Basically it is very useful for a country which has multi-
cultural citizens like Sri Lanka, India.
The SNSs negatively impact on culture in non-western
countries. In the most developing countries, the people can
observe the cultural changes through young people. The
people are unknowingly practicing foreign cultures due to
abundant usage of Social Networking Sites.
Even by anti-religious post and links create hatred among
peoples of different communities and cultures, Negative
use of social media is deteriorating the relationship among
the countries, social media is playing a key role to create
political awareness among people.
3.5 Impact on Communication
Social media hasdrastically changed how we communicate.
Not too long ago, we communicated through the mail, on a
land-line telephone, and in person. Today, we send text
messages, leave voice messages, use instant messenger,
send emails, talk through headphones, cell phones, and
online video calls and, of course, interact through the
Internet where a lot of Social Networking Sites has
redefined communication. AsSocial Networking Sites
changed unidirectional model of communication in to a
multidirectional model of communication. That model is
collectively called social media (also referred to as Web
2.0). Audience members are actively engaged in the
communication and are not just receivers of information
(Thackeray & Neiger, 2009). Those who access social
media can be both consumers and producers of media.
Such a redefinition has had an enormous effect. The entire
paradigm of social media has altered the basic rules of
communication, especially between business and their
audiences.
The researchers identified some rules to communicate
effectively in the social media. Those are:
People want:
 To have a say.
 Meaningful dialogue.
 To be engaged and involved in the process.
 Personal interactions with others.
 To be listened to.
 To help shape what they find useful.
 To connect with others engaged in similar
activities.
 Plain talk
 Communication to be genuine and relevant.
 To conduct business with ethical companies who
work transparently.
 To be in partnership.
While the tools and kinds of social media are many and
their implementations seemingly boundless, they all share a
common set of characteristics that meet the rules of social
media stated above. Those are: 5 Cs: [9]

5.
Table 2. Five Characteristics of SNSs
Characteristic Description
Conversation No longer is the commu-
nication one-way, broadcast
or somehow sent to a
passive audience
Contribution Encourages contributions
and reactions from anyone
who is interested.
Collaboration Promotes an exchange of
information between you
and your audience, and
among audience members,
by inviting participation.
Connection Accessing information on
the Internet only takes a
click.
Community a fellowship and relation-
ship with others who share
common attitudes, interests,
and goals
By these 5 ways the Social Networking Sites impacted on
Communication.
It changed the way of communication.Now the
communication is globalized and it is very easy. The people
no longer need to be waiting to hang out with whole world.
With no time consuming and with lower cost, the people
can share their things with global audience. Social
networking sites have facilitated communication. Members
of suchsites can easily form groups (called the
communities) and share their opinionsamong themselves
through discussion threads, forums and polls. These sites
serves good in many ways. The people can outsource
globally. The workers can communicate via video
conferencing and can conduct global conferences. The
people can access global market as well as can conduct e-
businesses easily.
But it even has negative impacts such as reducing human
ability of speaking face to face. It affected on intra-personal
skills as well as inter-personal communication skills.
The people are parting from real world by SNSs. They
would spend their time without understanding their real
environment. This will impact to oral communication and
non-verbal communication. They will be addicted to the
virtual world and cyber-crimes which has become a privacy
threat to the people worldwide.
3.6 Impact on Behaviors
My interpretation from this analysis is that SNS may be
having a significant impact on peoples' social behavior.
Both positive and negative consequences have
beenobserved. The positive consequences of SNS usage are
related to extension of immediatesocial networks, social
support and identity exploration amongst others.
Negativeconsequences observed are cases of bullying, the
publication of seemingly private data, thesearch for peer
validation from unknown contacts and different levels of
addiction, amongst others.
There are some other effects such as the cognitive effect on
patterns of behavior and thinking and issuesrelated to
identity and self-development, especially in the context of
young users. Theseresearches show that SNS have an
impact on the way peoplemanage their identities, on
patterns of behavior and thinking and disclosure of privacy.
Levels of addiction may also be attributed to behavior. It
may be argued that similar totelevision and videogames,
people will use SNS because they feel they are doing
somethingnew.
In addition, the fact that people can change their identity
whenever they want can have implications forthe way we
deal with identity issues today. Having a polymorphous
entity online also means thatidentities can be selected or
discarded almost at will; it also means that bad behavior,
like bullying may be performed online as the‘unbearable
lightness’ of virtual behavior may be impalpable. SNS
brands such as Facebook and Google+ now have “real
name” or “real identity” policies aimed at preventing
anonymity, pseudonyms, people having multiple identities,
and the setting up of fake accounts.
After drugs and alcohol addiction, if the world is facing any
new type of addiction disorder, then that is Facebook
addiction. This is a kind of Internet addiction, but social
networking site influences such that people goes mad
behind it. It is like people being immersed in virtual life
and forgetting about the physical world around them.
Alexandra V. Tobias, a mother from north Florida, killed
her own child because the boy was crying that make her
anger while she was playing Farmville on Face book. The
shocking story was reported by the Florida Times-Union in
2010. Salum Kombo, 18 years from London, was stabbed
by his friend over an argument that started over Facebook.
Salum wrote something stupid on his friend’s Facebook
wall and that provoked the boy to kill his best friend on the
street (France, 2009) and the number of murders and
suicides due to Social Networking maters has been
increased recently.

6.
If the SNSs affect your behaviors,
 You will start losing sleep over Facebook and that
hampers your daily activity.
 Spend more than an hour on Facebook.
 You become obsessed with your old loves and
start visiting their profile. And gradually it starts
to affect your current relationship status.
 You tend to ignore work and use Facebook in
office hours.
 When you think of going a day without Facebook,
it causes stress and anxiety to you.
Social networking sites should be limited for making
friends and fun in the leisure. But people should not
substitute it with the real life social contacts. Otherwise,
you will be facing social isolation, high level of anxiety and
other behavioral disorders.
TAXONOMY4.
The Social Networking sites can be categorized in few ways as
well as the data we shared via them.
4.1 Types of Social Networks
There are number of ways to categorize the available Social
Networking Sites. While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn might
be the first sites that come to mind when thinking of social
networking, these popular websites do not represent the full scope
of social networks that exist.[3]
Table3. Categories of Social Networking Sites
Type Definition Examples
Social
Connections
Keeping in touch
with friends and
family members
Facebook, Google+,
Twitter, MySpace
Media Sharing Social networking
makes it easy to
share video and
photography
content online.
YouTube, Flickr,
Picasa
Professional Professional social
networks are
designed to provide
opportunities for
career-related
growth.
LinkedIn,
Classroom 2.0
Informational Informational
communities are
made up of people
seeking answers to
everyday problems.
Forums, sl-
unlimited.com
Educational Educational
networks are where
Stackoverfloaw.com
many students go
in order to
collaborate with
other students on
academic projects,
to conduct research
for school, or to
interact with
professors and
teachers via blogs
and classroom
forums.
Academic Academic
researchers who
want to share their
research and review
results achieved by
colleagues
Academia.edu
4.2 Data types on SNS
This section is about taxonomy for describingand classifying data
types on Social Networking Sites. [2]
Figure 3. Demonstration on FACEBOOK

7.
CONCLUSION5.
Social media is most recent form of media and having
many features and characteristics. It have many facilities on
same channel like as communicating ,texting, images
sharing , audio and video sharing , fast publishing, linking
with all over world, direct connecting. It is also cheapest
fast access to the world so it is very important for all age of
peoples. Its use is increasing day by day with high rate in
all over the world.
The growth of social networking sites shows a significant
change in the social and personal behavior of Internet users.
SNS has become an essential medium of communication
and entertainment among the young adults. Though it has
started to affect the daily activities of normal human
beings, the popularity of SNS is not going to reduce in near
future. Everything in this world can be used for a bad
purpose as well as for good. It is us who can make the
difference and utilize social networking sites wisely for the
benefit of developing social bonds across the geographical
borders. However, nefarious act of cyber criminals
discussed in the article has to be brought to the fore and
stringent measures should be taken to curb the menace.
Cyber laws have to be fortified with advancement of rules
as if violators cannot escape committing a crime, at the cost
of societal values.
Majority of the sampled researches are agreed with this
argument that the positive use of Social Networking Sites
can brought socio-political awareness, enhance the
different skills like increase language proficiency, develop
online communication skills, create broader visionary
power and connectivity. It is also useful for advertising, job
hunting portals, publishing research articles and other
techniques etc.
Healthy mind get progress in healthy physique. The people
should avoid from excessive use of social media. They
should be balanced in their life and give proper time to the
co-curricular activities in their daily life routine.Finally, we
must be vigilant that e-world cannot be a substitute for the
real world. So, we need to learn to respect the real people
and real life.
5.1 Recommendations
After getting all findings and discussed the conclusion of
collected data the researchers recommend some measures
to use of Social Networking Sites in right direction and
utilize social media favorable and appropriate manner to its
users. Positive use of social media can develop the youth’s
academic career, their skills, better living style, to adopt
new trends, fashion, and anthropology so on and to
improve e-commerce in the country and to develop mutual-
understanding among multi-cultural citizens.
Social media is recent and most favorite form of media. it is
a useful tool so its use is essential to get information and
knowledge when people going to connect the social media
should keep in mind that basic purpose to usage and always
remember that they are going to share the information or
links are not only for their gratification and interest but also
for all their contacts and friends community, so be carefully
utilize with social responsibility, ethically, religiously and
politically appropriate links should be share.
As with any other social problem and threat related to
young people in society, banning access to SNS is not the
best solution. Young internet users are often intelligent
enough to find new ways and means of accessing SNS.
More awareness and educational campaigns highlighting
safe usage of SNS are needed. It is important that people
learn how to manage their online data. Parents should also
be involved in such Educational events.
Keep in mind the society standards, social norms , religious
values and do not share the links that create hatred different
communities among the different segments, groups, sects,
religions, cultures and races. The relevant information
should be preferred on social media sites.
The educational computer labs must provide an
organizational platform for the students and the researchers
to make their use in an appropriate direction. There should
be watchdog software in the server to hunt the students who
are using these sites or these sites may be permanently
blocked or a specific timing should be given to the students
in the university hours for the use of social media websites.
There should extra-curriculum and awareness forum in the
educational institution regarding the instruction about the
positive usage of social media networking portals.
Since the last few years, the use of social has significantly
increased to make perception regarding the socio-political
images. The users should be aware about the right to
information which is provided to them from their respective
states and societies. They should avoid from defamation
and hate speech on the social media forums.
Whether to use social networking site or not is an
individual decision to many. But you must be aware of
certain things when discussing your private life in public.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS6.
In the future researcherswill consider more about cyber-
crimes and other security issues and privacy violations
rather than other impacts as the data security and user
privacy is the key elements for a successful SNS.As now-a-
days revealing personal information on social sites can
make users vulnerable to crimes like identity theft, and
stalking etc.
Though the exponential growth of SNS over the past few
years is an important indicator, it isnot the only way to
analyze the implications of SNS. Future studies should
consider thedifference between the number of subscriptions
and actual usage of SNS, and also attempt togauge what
drives the usage of these applications. They should also try
to gauge their implicit and latent effects.

8.
As both email providers and SNSstrive for user loyalty, it
can be observed that these two distinct players may be
competingagainst each other in the near future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS7.
I am sincerely thanking to Mr.S.Thirukumaran, Senior
Lecturer in Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna
for motivating us to do this survey.
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