Lesson AWF-6

A Study on Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Society

W.Akram, R.Kumar

International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, Volume-5, Issue-10 , 2017

Abstract

Social  media is a  platform for public around the World to discuss their issues and opinions. Before knowing the actual aspects  of social  media people must have to know  what does  social media  mean?  Social media  is a  term used to describe the interaction between groups or individuals in which they produce, share, and sometimes exchange ideas, images, videos and many more over the internet and in virtual communities. Children are growing up surrounded by mobile devices and interactive social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook, Orkut which has made the social media a vital aspect of their life. Social network is transforming the behavior in which youthful people relate with their parents, peers, as well as how  they make use  of technology. The  effects of social  networking are twofold.[1] On the positive  side, social networks can act as invaluable tools for professionals. They achieve this by assisting young professionals to market their skills and seek business opportunities. Social networking sites may also  be used to network efficiently. On the negative side, the internet  is  laden  with  a  number  of  risks  associated  with  online  communities.  Cyber  bullying,  which  means  a  type  of harassment that is perpetrated using electronic technology, is one of the risks. In this paper we cover every aspect of social media with its positive and negative effects. Focus is on the particular field like health, business, education, society and youth. During this paper we explain how these media will influence the society in a broad way. 

Keywords: Social Media, Business, Society, Mobile Devices, Education, Cyber Bullying.

Conclusions

As  the  technology  is  developing,  the  web-based  social networking  has  turned  into  the  routine  for  every  last individual,  people;  groups  are  seen  dependent  with  this technology  consistently.  Online  networking  has  expanded the  quality  and rate  of  coordinated  effort for  students.[8] Business  uses  online  networking  to  upgrade  an organizations execution in different courses, for example, to fulfill  business  goals,  expanding  yearly  offers  of  the organization. Youths are found in contact with these media every day .Social media has different merits yet it likewise has  a  few  faults  which  influence  individuals  contrarily. False  data  can  lead  the  training  framework  to disappointment,  in  organizations  wrong  promotion  will influence  the  productivity,  online  networking  can manhandle  the general  public by attacking  on individuals' security, some pointless sites can impact youth that can end up plainly savage and can take a few wrong activities. Last but  not  least  ,  all  the  citizens  are  advised  to  adopt  the positive aspects of social media and avoid negative effects, so that we can avail the benefits of these latest and emerging technologies.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323903323_A_Study_on_Positive_and_Negative_Effects_of_Social_Media_on_Society 

Optimism for the World’s Future versus the Personal Future: Application to Environmental Attitudes

Rory O’Brien McElwee & Lance Brittain 

Current Psychology volume 28, pages133–145 (2009)

Abstract

Optimism and pessimism for the future have been widely studied, but little is known about distinctions among types of optimism. In the present work optimism for the personal future and optimism for a more global world’s future were shown to be related yet distinct variables among responses from 156 undergraduate students. Furthermore, World Optimism predicted lower levels of pro-environmental attitudes (the New Ecological Paradigm) whereas Personal Optimism did not after its shared variance with World Optimism was removed. Personal Optimism (but not World Optimism) was associated with Consideration of Future Consequences, a measure of locus of control, and other measures of optimism and pessimism. Discussion addresses this distinction and its implications for understanding environmental attitudes and other individual differences.

Keywords Environmental attitudes. Environmental concern. Optimism and pessimism. Locus of control . Consideration of future consequences

Discussion and conclusion

A 2007 poll of American adults by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy found that people continue to increase the seriousness with which they consider environmental threat (Global Strategy Group 2007). In that survey, 83% of respondents considered global warming a serious threat (up from 70% just 3 years earlier) and 68% expressed a belief that people can control climate change. However, not all data yield cause for optimism about a pro-environmental shift in American culture: some people who purport to value environmentally-conscious behaviors such as recycling are easily swayed from their position if their motive was largely to espouse a socially-accepted viewpoint (Koestner et al. 2001). Furthermore, people’s self-views as environmentalists are heavily context-dependent: they can be weakened by framing the issue as actively helping improve environmental conditions rather than not actively harming the environment and by asking respondents about specific domains of environmental behaviors rather than general concern for the environment (Wade-Benzoni et al. 2007). As Wade and colleagues (2007) concluded, there are some signs that Americans are shifting toward more environmentally-concerned viewpoints and lifestyles, but not nearly quickly enough given the continued and rapid degradation of the ecosystem.

The present study aimed to learn more about the foundational worldview associated with pro-environmental attitudes. Using the New Ecological Paradigm, in which humans’ relation and responsibility to the ecosystem is emphasized (Dunlap et al. 2000), we explored whether environmental attitudes can be better explained as a component of a broader cognitive and affective orientation to the world than as a reflection of a more narrow, personal orientation. Participants completed individual difference measures assessing Personal and World Optimism via the degree of association between the valence and likelihood of possible future events; measures of personal and sociopolitical locus of control; and a dispositional measure of optimism and pessimism as well as the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale. The data supported our hypothesis that environmental attitudes would be more strongly associated with World Optimism than with Personal Optimism; indeed, only World Optimism predicted environmental attitudes after removing shared variance in regression analyses. Conversely, in the personal realm, measures of optimism, personal efficacy, and consideration of future consequences were significantly associated with each other but not with World Optimism or environmental attitudes. These data are supportive of the notion that a global domain such as environmental attitudes is more strongly connected to other global attitudes (in this case, a measure of optimism for the world’s future).

Is it good to be optimistic? In many ways, yes. As Wenglert and Rosen (2000) suggested, if one foresees a negative future, it may be hard to work to improve it. On the other hand, if the future does not look too bad, perhaps there is no need to take precautions (see Hatfield and Job 2001). Note that in the present study the relationship between World Optimism and environment attitudes was negative: respondent who were less optimistic reported more concern with the environment. This finding supported our idea that environmental concern is part of a worldview that acknowledges problems and challenges; taken to the extreme, a view that “everything will work out fine” is likely to be dangerously detrimental to environmental concern and action. We encourage further research on this link; are people who are overly optimistic in the global domain less likely to engage in environmentally-friendly behaviors? What are their coping strategies for handling information about ecocrisis? As was shown by Homburg et al. (2007) in their work on coping strategies for environmental threat, people who show more active problem-solving approaches as opposed to de-emphasizing the seriousness of problems are better able to handle stress and are more likely to engage in ecological behaviors such as using public transportation and conserving water. Future research could profitably explore whether and the degree to which a denial of the seriousness of problems in the world may lead to avoidance of pro-environmental behaviors (Hatfield and Job 2001; Homburg et al. 2007). Indeed, dispositional optimists have been shown to preferentially process positive rather than threat-related information (Karademas et al. 2007), suggesting possible future research examining informationsource preference for optimists and pessimists. Would people who are optimistic about the world’s future tend to avoid information about environmental threat more so than would people who are relatively more pessimistic? Learning more about how people who view the future of the world as basically okay (or even as positively rosy) interact with environmental information and behaviors is important; we are actively pursuing this line of research in our lab.

The present work raises issues of refinement of psychology’s knowledge of proenvironmental behaviors versus attitudes and how these may be related to other individual difference variables such as locus of control and consideration of future consequences. As reviewed earlier, both of these personality attributes have been shown to predict pro-environmental behaviors such as transportation choices and recycling in previous research. However, in the present study they were found to be unrelated to environmental concern as measured by NEP scores. This result suggests that these personality attributes may not have stable relationships with proenvironmental attitudes, or perhaps that the ecological behaviors as measured in most relevant studies (for example, Schwepker and Cornwall 1991; Strathman et al. 1994) are less tied to the general worldview assessed by the NEP and thus the behaviors are predicted by future orientation and perceived control whereas a pro-ecological worldview is not. This too is an area ripe for future research and refinement. 

The difference between the personal and global domain is of central interest in the present work. This study documents important distinctions between Personal and World Optimism. As had been suggested by Zaleski et al. (1994) and further documented by Wenglert and Rosen (2000), the very large positivity bias seen for Personal Optimism is considerably reduced for World Optimism. This is shown in the present study both by the significantly higher mean correlation between valence and perceived likelihood of possible future events for Personal Optimism as well as the greatly more skewed distribution for Personal than for World Optimism. Additionally supportive of this important distinction is the pattern of associations with other individual difference measures: only Personal Optimism was associated with Personal Efficacy, Consideration of Future Consequences, and a dispositional measure of pessimism, whereas only World Optimism was independently associated with environmental attitudes. Because so much research in personality and social psychology has addressed the concept of optimism, further study of this largely undocumented distinction and its relation to other outcome variables is needed.

It has been nearly a decade since Oskamp (2000) in a special issue of American Psychologist called for the involvement of psychologists in understanding and combating the destruction of the environment though human behavior. In his explanation of environmental threats such as overpopulation and carbon emissions, he made clear the central role of human behavior in causing these threats and the need to reverse these consequences though changes in behavior. Behavior, of course, does not occur in a vacuum; Oskamp (2000) detailed some situational factors such as the lack of availability of electric cars that prevent people from behaving in more environmentally-friendly ways. However, environmentally responsible behavior has also been linked to pro-environmental attitudes. Both for this very pragmatic reason as well as for theoretical clarification, we encourage further study of these issues.

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-009-9051-4