The internet and social media provide young people with a range of benefits, and opportunities to empower themselves in a variety of ways. Young people can maintain social connections and support networks that otherwise wouldn't be possible, and can access more information than ever before.

Social networking is a relatively new advancement in technology. They are different platforms or websites that people can create personal profiles, share pictures, videos, and text updates to their friends, family, and people from all over the world. News, trends, videos, pictures, and just about anything else can go “viral” in a matter of hours, which makes you wonder, what is all of the craze about? It is very easy to get carried away with the attention and interactions you can have twenty four hours a day on websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but what are the pros and cons that these social networking sites are having on our society?

The Pros of Social Networking

1. Staying Connected
The main purpose of social media is to be able to stay connected to friends and families in today’s fast paced and ever changing worlds. You are able to rekindle old friendships, share family photos, and special events in your life with just about everyone you know, at the same time.

2. Finding People With Common Interests
Social networking is also a great way to meet entirely new people. You can seek out groups that are focused towards your special interests and hobbies and connect with local people that share the same interests. Online and social media dating is almost more common than traditional dating is in today’s world.

3. Invaluable Promotional Tool
Companies, artists, and musicians can reach an impossibly large and diverse amount of people using social media sites. This allows them to promote and market themselves and their products in a way that has never been seen before.

4. Information Spreads Incredibly Fast
Breaking news and other important information can spread like wildfire on social media sites. Important things like recalls, storm information, or missing children are all communicated and taken seriously very quickly.

5. Helps To Catch And Convict Criminals
People often do not think of the consequences of what they post of these social sites. Pictures of themselves doing illegal things, or even bragging posts about crimes they have committed are all things that law enforcement use to persecute these criminals. They also use these sites to identify and solve existing cases.

There are more benefit of social media/Networking..

The Cons of Social Networking

1. Perpetuates False And Unreliable Information
Just like stated above, anything can spread to millions of people within hours or days on social media. This also, unfortunately, includes things that are false or made up. This information can cause panic and severe misinformation in society.

2. Causing Major Relationship Problems
Online social interactions with social networking have not only been starting new relationships, but ending many others. It is very simple to communicate and share pictures or plans with a person on social media and keep it completely under wraps. This new temptation has been driving wedges into people’s real life, offline relationships, often time ending them for good. Social networking puts trust to the limit.

3. Cyber Bullying Is A Growing Problem
Having access to people’s lives at all times is not always a good thing. A new trend of cyber bullying is wreaking havoc all across the world. This is especially true with young kids. They are publicly harassing one another, and posting mean or slanderous things which are broadcast-ed to the entire cyber world.

4. Used To Profile and Discriminate In The Job World
Just about everyone has a social media account the shows what they look like, the type of life that they live, and how old they are. Employers are using this to their advantages is some very unsettling ways. Jobs that are looking for a certain criteria of person, but cannot legally express these criteria, are using social media to prescreen their applicants.

5. The Addiction Is Real
One of the biggest problems with the social media craze is that people are becoming more and more addicted to using it. It is the number one time waster at work, in school, and at home. All of this has caused people to have literal withdraws from their social networks. Crazy!

6. Online interaction substitution for offline interaction. Since people are now connected all the time and you can pull up a friend's social profile with a click of your mouse or a tap of your smartphone, it's a lot easier to use online interaction as a substitute for face-to-face interaction. Some people argue that social media actually promotes antisocial human behavior.

7. Distraction and procrastination. How often do you see someone look at their phone? People get distracted by all the social apps and news and messages they receive, leading to all sorts of problems like distracted driving or the lack of gaining someone's full attention during a conversation. Browsing social media can also feed procrastination habits and become something people turn to in order to avoid certain tasks or responsibilities.

Social media is a land of new opportunity. There are countless personal and professional benefits of using social media. With a little love and care, we can start to build and shape our personal brands into an epicenter of opportunity.

Note::: Focus on using social media for all the good points outlined in this article, but be wary of falling victim to the dark side of an online interaction.