Has online social networking helped us or harmed us?

advantages and disadvantages of social networking

Social networking has become a major part of our society. It enables people from all over the world to connect with each other, share information and send messages. Since people are spending more and more time surfing social networks, it is important to find out that social networking affects our lives in a positive or negative way. From my point of view, social networking unfortunately does more harm than good.

First of all, social networking is possibly addictive. Many people wake up each day and check social websites first instead of reaching for a newspaper. Some are obsessed by social networks and ofter go online with their phones almost every hour to have their status updated. As a consequence, they can easily get distracted during work or lessons. Another drawback to social networking is that some users share too much information without being aware of the fact that there are stalkers, cyber-bullies who can use such information to blackmail them and even gain ransom. Even if a user of a social site has her privacy setting on the highest level, her informaatuon can still be passed on by someone on her friend list. The victims of blackmail and cyber-bullying may have to face stress, depression or even mental breakdown. In addition, there is an extensive range of mental and health problems known to be caused by spending too much time on social network.

To sum up, the disadvantages of social networking outweighs the advantages. While social media are increasingly becoming an inevitable part of our lives, we have to be cautious not to be dependent on it since it could lead to unexpected problems.

@darlynng
Hi Trang, based on the question you raise and the conclusion you gave I think you should change the approach of your essay as introduction, body and conclusion part. so that you can give an overview about social network in your introduction part and write about how it harms and how it helps in your body and based on the reasons you will give in the body part you can make the conclusion which can be the same conclusion you gave in your essay. But you have to justify that by comparing the two in the body part which will be your second paragraph.

Trang, can you provide me with a copy of the prompt you are trying to respond to? I need to reference the prompt when reviewing your essay. I am unable to truly determine the problems with your content without it. What I can tell you though is that your essay is not the proper length for an IELTS or TOEFL essay. Your second paragraph should have been divided into 2 paragraphs based on the 5 sentence limitation per paragraph. So the formatting is off because you chose to discuss 2 drawbacks in one paragraph. You should have one drawback per paragraph instead. The normal paragraph count is a maximum of 5 depending upon the prompt requirements. I need to be sure of what the discussion process for this essay is so that I can tell you how many paragraphs you should have. On average though, you can get a good score for a well developed 4 paragraph essay. This essay, doesn't give me the confidence that you would score well using this in an actual test. I can better assess your work with your next practice essay. Just provide the full and complete prompt with that one please.

Hello,
Here are some corrections,

obsessed with social networks and often go
her information can still be passed by someone on her

Your essay arguments look good, but as Holt also said, the structure does not look good. You wrote 276 words which is more than the minimum requirements, but the problem is paragraph 2, where two arguments are presented (which are fine by the way), It's a really long paragraph that you easily can split in two.

Also, try to provide some examples for each argument as well. It makes the arguments more solid.