Social Networking and INDIA

To start with, I am writing on the subject suggested by my DL. Thanks DL!!!

Social networking is a trend in the Indian youth. Anybody in the age group of 15-35 would be surprised if you are not using any of the social networking sites. To name a few of them - Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, iBibo, Twitter, Myspace (these are as per my knowledge, am sure there are many more). I am enrolled in most of them except for Twitter and Myspace, which is not that popular in India. I would not be surprised if I join them in the near future ;)

Let me be a critic for these sites and give my opinion.

Here follows why we all like these social networking sites -

1. They are free of cost. Need not spend to talk to people or to see them on the internet.

2. Most (guess all) of the sites have options of posting pictures. You can see your childhood friends growing, their special moments and upload yours too.

3. Can reach a lot of people. You wanna start a campaign, here you got the way.

4. Search your old friends or people you met only once and have no mean to contact.

5. Stressbuster

6. Can gossip about people (old friends) with the information on the sites :)

7. Easy access to girl/guy's profile, pics :)

8. Can create your own community and get information from people.

9. The recent change in these sites - they let you play games and compete with your friends.

10. The most common way of Internet TIMEPASS in India :)

Guess there could be many more to add! If you know any, plz let me know.

I shall now write the negative points -

1. Even though the site does not charge, internet and power bills shoot up.

2. You take pictures with the only intention of posting it on the site. The best pic will be the profile pic :)

3. You run into unwanted profiles and later get into trouble (may not be that serious though).

4. Do you actually need to know all the people on the earth. If you really were interested, you would be sipping a coffee with them. If you want to keep in touch, you would anyhow - email , telephone, letters or meet them personally.

5. Teenagers are glued to the internet for this lone reason.

6. Kids prefer playing with their friends on these websites, rather than going to the playground.

7. Easy access to your personal information, could turn out unsafe.

8. Kind of addiction.

9. Increasing number of fake profiles.

10. Lot of people feel its a WASTE of TIME...

Guess, could add more negative points also.

Do all these stop us from being on internet and continue our social networking? The funniest part is we can spend hours chatting with an unknown person but would not prefer spending some time in person with our loved ones.

This concept is certainly a trendsetter for the Indian population. It boils down to the fact - You need to know where to draw the lines. Too much of it is certainly too bad...