Summary Writing
Read the following article about social networking and then write a summary describing the professional and social benefits and disadvantages of social networking sites.
• Your summary should be about 100 words long (and no more than 120 words long).
• You should use your own words as far as possible.
You will receive up to 8 marks for the content of your summary, and up to 8 marks for the style and accuracy of your language.
Make a society on the web
Social networking sites are a recent and, sometimes, controversial innovation. The most popular use of them is in building and maintaining friendship. They enable people, by means of the internet, to get in touch with friends easily, without having to worry about interrupting them in the way that telephone calls might. People can keep in regular, even daily, contact with details of their friends’ lives, such as the clothes they wear and the music they listen to, even sharing photos by way of illustration. The fact that messages can be posted on the site at any time of the day or night makes for almost instantaneous updates; every detail of a day’s events – meals eaten, lessons attended – is there to be shared almost as it happens.
As the world is getting more and more oriented towards business, success and survival in any walk of life depends largely on skills in making community. Social networking sites have radicalized this area of our career and professional life. Networking is the buzz word these days and communities built on sites contribute a lot in finding opportunities, seeking professional help and sharing information and knowledge.
Skilled workers are enabled to advertise themselves without being passive respondents to corporate advertisements. This opens a lot of new careers for individuals and small collectives of people who are competent in their own ways.
On the social side, one major impact of social networking is the rise of social media which give opportunity for every ordinary person not only to get news and stories, but also to make them by themselves. They are also empowered to speak their view without being supervised or hindered by ‘expert’ editors or leaders.
A new development in social lives across the continents is the rise of small men, women and even children of creativity and talents to sudden wave of fame and stardom. This is largely due to the scope of virality in social networking sites.
Many surveys have revealed that these new emergence has contributed to solve or lesson the severity of many social problems. They have made lives more transparent and consequently many problems are brought to public notice immediately. This has the impact of getting sudden attention on the part of the officials
However, more importantly, social networking sites have many critics who say that relationships formed through them, unlike face-to-face friendships, are too impersonal to be described as real friendships. Certainly, to describe a hundred people as your ‘best’ friends is absolute nonsense.
The constant desire to know what their contacts are doing leads networking site users to become almost addicted to checking for updates. The resultant loss of privacy for both parties is quite humiliating and sometimes even damaging.
While social networking sites help on one hand to reduce social problems, they have brought new ones. Cyber bullying and crimes have become a serious head ache for law and order personnel. On professional world, the fall in quality is often attributed to new media. As anyone can post, undesirable exposure to low quality materials and opinions begin to rule and it pauses serious threats to all serious activities.
