Virtual Communities

Social networking sites, such as Twitter (www.twitter.com), Tumblr and Facebook (www.facebook.com) allow you to talk to anyone you like with another account. Social networking sites allow you to keep in touch with people no matter where they are. This helps people to regularly talk to relatives who live far away etc.  Also, the messages you send and receive always stay there unless you delete them so you can always revisit the conversation if you want to. However, all social networking sites have a disadvantage which is cyber bullying. Some people use these websites to post things horrible things about another person and most hide it behind an anonymous profile on websites like Ask fm.  Another disadvantage is that there is not the same sense of security as there is when you are talking to someone face to face as another person has access to what you say.

YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a good advantage of communication over the internet people are able to watch various videos such as their favourite band’s music videos, youtubers who make videos, funny viral videos or how to do videos etc. People can talk to others in the comments about what they think of the video this begins to create a virtual community. They can also share the video to other social websites.  YouTube has a couple of disadvantages, as spam comments are sometimes on YouTube videos and some people comment abuse at either other commenters or the person who has actually uploaded the video.

Overall, social networking sites have both good and bad effects on society. Although you are able to communicate with your friends, family etc. and share what you love with other people there are still people who use these websites for abuse and it is difficult for the people who run the websites to target who is using for the website for bad purposes and so it is difficult to stop.