What Are the Benefits of Internet & Social Networking?
Social network sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn provide more than just a way to beat loneliness or chat with celebrities. These networks provide wide-ranging benefits from improved communication skills and a more open worldview to a more intuitive way of understanding technology and establishing better relationships with business partners, customers and clients.
Social Skills
For some people, especially the youthful crowd, social interaction can be awkward and difficult. Using social networks over the internet allows people to improve their interactive personal skills, build friendships and create bonds. Shared interests and hobbies allow people to explore their individuality and always find a circle of understanding friends to feel at ease with or to learn about new ways of looking at situations. These social skills can be transferred to face-to-face interactions as well.
Technical Skills
To maneuver the vast number of pages, updates and links of social networking sites, you have to learn to use the technology. Teenagers have become legendary at texting updates to social sites using the tiny keypads on phones, and the increasing age demographics on Facebook means that more adults and seniors are getting online and learning new skills as well. Social networking boosts technical knowledge across the board, giving all users better skills to use in future jobs and projects.
Open to Diversity
The internet is filled with different viewpoints and opinions. Sooner or later, you will bump up against information that casts your personal world in a new light. Social networks are hot spots for debating issues, sharing life experiences and getting a first-person look into someone else's world, thus providing for expanded horizons and a wider tolerance of different beliefs.
Business Networking and Service
Social networking provides many benefits to businesses, from finding new colleagues and expanding your professional contacts on LinkedIn to helping customers with issues over Twitter or Facebook. Connecting with clients and customers via social media can bring better, faster resolution to problems and positive word-of-mouth advertising when compared to leaving people to wrangle with automated phone systems and slow response times.
Collective Thinking
For companies that have many employees or a telecommuting workforce, social networking can be a great place to connect with new ideas, share information and give all employees the same tools and goals so that everyone pushes toward success in the same direction. This type of collective thinking can also help keep up morale since everyone can participate. In a more traditional meeting setting, all opinions or ideas might not be heard.
