essay on online social networks

Social Networking Sites Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on social networking sites.

Social networking sites are a great platform for people to connect with their loved ones. It helps in increasing communication and making connections with people all over the world. Although people believe that social networking sites are harmful, they are also very beneficial.

Furthermore, we can classify social networking sites as per blogging, vlogging, podcasting and more. We use social networking sites for various uses. It helps us greatly; however, it also is very dangerous. We must monitor the use of social networking sites and limit their usage so it does not take over our lives.

Advantage and Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are everywhere now. In other words, they have taken over almost every sphere of life. They come with both, advantages as well as disadvantages. If we talk about the educational field, these sites enhance education by having an influence on the learners. They can explore various topics for their projects.

Furthermore, the business field benefits a lot from social networking sites. The companies use social networking sites to connect better with their potential clients and business partners. Moreover, people in search of jobs use the sites to connect better with employers and firms. This gives them a great opportunity to seek better jobs.

Read 500+ Words Essay on Social Media here.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of social networking sites are also very high. They give birth to cybercrimes like cyberbullying , sexual exploitation, money scams and more. It is very harmful to kids as people make them victims of pornography and more. It also gives easy access to the pedophiles of children’s information.

Most importantly, social networking sites are very addictive. They drop the productivity levels of people. Students waste their time using it and get distracted easily from their studies. Moreover, it makes them inactive and limits their physical activities.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Famous Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites have created a massive presence in today’s world. While there are many types of these sites, some are more famous than the others.

For instance, Facebook is the largest social networking site. It has more than 1 billion users which keep increasing every day. Moreover, it also helps you promote your business or brand through ads.

Secondly, there is Instagram. It is owned by Facebook only. Similarly, this app allows you to share photos and videos with your followers. It gives users a lot of filters to beautify your photos.

Furthermore, Twitter is also a great social networking site. It is mostly used by celebrities. This site allows you to post short messages called tweets to share your thoughts. Twitter is a great platform to convey your message in limited words.

Moreover, we have LinkedIn. This is one of the most sought after sites which allow professionals to locate and hire employees. Subsequently, it is available in more than twenty languages to give a user-friendly interface.

Finally, we have WhatsApp. Though it entered the game quite late, this instant messaging app made a place for itself instantaneously. Facebook acquired this app as well. It allows you to share text messages, images, videos, audios, documents and more.

In short, social networking sites are a bane and a boon. It depends on us how we use to. Anything in excess is harmful; likewise, social networking sites are too. Use them for your benefit and do not let them control your life.

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• Review article
• Open access
• Published: 30 January 2021

Understanding students’ behavior in online social networks: a systematic literature review

• Maslin Binti Masrom 1 ,
• Abdelsalam H. Busalim   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5826-8593 2 ,
• Hassan Abuhassna 3 &
• Nik Hasnaa Nik Mahmood 1  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  18 , Article number:  6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The use of online social networks (OSNs) has increasingly attracted attention from scholars’ in different disciplines. Recently, student behaviors in online social networks have been extensively examined. However, limited efforts have been made to evaluate and systematically review the current research status to provide insights into previous study findings. Accordingly, this study conducted a systematic literature review on student behavior and OSNs to explicate to what extent students behave on these platforms. This study reviewed 104 studies to discuss the research focus and examine trends along with the important theories and research methods utilized. Moreover, the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model was utilized to classify the factors that influence student behavior. This study’s results demonstrate that the number of studies that address student behaviors on OSNs have recently increased. Moreover, the identified studies focused on five research streams, including academic purpose, cyber victimization, addiction, personality issues, and knowledge sharing behaviors. Most of these studies focused on the use and effect of OSNs on student academic performance. Most importantly, the proposed study framework provides a theoretical basis for further research in this context.

Introduction

The rapid development of Web 2.0 technologies has caused increased usage of online social networking (OSN) sites among individuals. OSNs such as Facebook are used almost every day by millions of users (Brailovskaia et al. 2020 ). OSNs allow individuals to present themselves via virtual communities, interact with their social networks, and maintain connections with others (Brailovskaia et al. 2020 ). Therefore, the use of OSNs has continually attracted young adults, especially students (Kokkinos and Saripanidis 2017 ; Paul et al. 2012 ). Given the popularity of OSNs and the increased number of students of different ages, many education institutions (e.g., universities) have used them to market their educational programs and to communicate with students (Paul et al. 2012 ). The popularity and ubiquity of OSNs have radically changed education systems and motivated students to engage in the educational process (Lambić 2016 ). The children of the twenty-first century are technology-oriented, and thus their learning style differs from previous generations (Moghavvemi et al. 2017a , b ). Students in this era have alternatives to how and where they spend time to learn. OSNs enable students to share knowledge and seek help from other students. Lim and Richardson ( 2016 ) emphasized that one important advantage of OSNs as an educational tool is to increase connections between classmates, which increases information sharing. Furthermore, the use of OSNs has also opened new communication channels between students and teachers. Previous studies have shown that students strengthened connections with their teachers and instructors using OSNs (e.g., Facebook, and Twitter). Therefore, the characteristics and features of OSNs have caused many students to use them as an educational tool, due to the various facilities provided by OSN platforms, which makes learning more fun to experience (Moghavvemi et al. 2017a ). This has caused many educational institutions to consider Facebook as a medium and as a learning tool for students to acquire knowledge (Ainin et al. 2015 ).

OSNs including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have been the most utilized platforms for education purposes (Akçayır and Akçayır 2016 ). For instance, the number of daily active users on Facebook reached 1.73 billion in the first quarter of 2020, with an increase of 11% compared to the previous year (Facebook 2020 ). As of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook has over 2.7 billion active monthly users (Clement 2020 ). Lim and Richardson ( 2016 ) empirically showed that students have positive perceptions toward using OSNs as an educational tool. A review of the literature shows that many studies have investigated student behaviors on these sites, which indicates the significance of the current review in providing an in-depth understanding of student behavior on OSNs. To date, various studies have investigated why students use OSNs and explored different student behaviors on these sites. Although there is an increasing amount of literature on this emerging topic, little research has been devoted to consolidating the current knowledge on OSN student behaviors. Moreover, to utilize the power of OSNs in an education context, it is important to study and understand student behaviors in this setting. However, current research that investigates student behaviors in OSNs is rather fragmented. Thus, it is difficult to derive in-depth and meaningful implications from these studies. Therefore, a systematic review of previous studies is needed to synthesize previous findings, identify gaps that need more research, and provide opportunities for further research. To this end, the purpose of this study is to explore the current literature in order to understand student behaviors in online social networks. Accordingly, a systematic review was conducted in order to collect, analyze, and synthesize current studies on student behaviors in OSNs.

This study drew on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model to classify factors and develop a framework for better understanding of student behaviors in the context of OSNs. The S-O-R model suggests that various aspects of the environment (S), incite individual cognitive and affective reactions (O), which in turn derives their behavioral responses (R) (Mehrabian and Russell 1974 ). In order to achieve effective results in a clear and understandable manner, five research questions were proposed as shown below.

What was the research regional context covered in previous studies?

What were the focus and trends of previous studies?

What were the research methods used in previous studies?

What were the major theories adopted in previous studies?

What important factors were studied to understand student usage behaviors in OSNs?

This paper is organized as follows. The second section discusses the concept of online social networks and their definition. The third section describes the review method used to extract, analyze, and synthesize studies on student behaviors. The fourth section provides the result of analyzing the 104 identified primary studies and summarizes their findings based on the research questions. The fifth section provides a discussion on the results based on each research question. The sixth section highlights the limitations associated with this study, and the final section provides a conclusion of the study.

• Online social networks

Since online social networks such as Facebook were introduced last decade, they have attracted millions of users and have become integrated into our daily routines. OSNs provide users with virtual spaces where they can find other people with similar interests to communicate with and share their social activities (Lambić et al. 2016 ). The concept of OSNs is a combination of technology, information, and human interfaces that enable users to create an online community and build a social network of friends (Borrero et al. 2014 ). Kum Tang and Koh ( 2017 ) defined OSNs as “web-based virtual communities where users interact with real-life friends and meet other people with shared interests” . A more detailed and well-cited definition of OSN was introduced by Boyd and Ellison ( 2008 ) who defined OSNs as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” . Due to its popularity, many researches have examined the effect of OSNs on different disciplines such as business (Kujur and Singh 2017 ), healthcare (Chung 2014 ; Lin et al. 2016 ; Mano 2014 ), psychology (Pantic 2014 ), and education (Hamid et al.  2016 , 2015 ; Roblyer et al. 2010 ).

The heavy use of OSNs by students has led many studies to examine both positive and negative effects of these sites on students, including the time spent on OSNs usage (Chang and Heo 2014 ; Wohn and Larose 2014 ), engagement in academic activities (Ha et al. 2018 ; Sheeran and Cummings 2018 ), as well as the effect of OSN on students’ academic performance. Lim and Richardson ( 2016 ) stated that the main reasons for students to use OSNs as an educational tool is to increase their interactions and establish connections with classmates. Tower et al. ( 2014 ) found that OSN platforms such as Facebook have the potential to improve student self-efficacy in learning and develop their learning skills to a higher level. Therefore, some education institutions have started to develop their own OSN learning platforms (Tally 2010 ). Mazman and Usluel ( 2010 ) highlighted that using OSNs for educational and instructional contexts is an idea worth developing because students spend a lot of time on these platforms. Yet, the educational activities conducted on OSNs are dependent on the nature of the OSNs used by the students (Benson et al. 2015 ). Moreover, for teaching and learning, instructors have begun using OSNs platforms for several other purposes such as increasing knowledge exchanges and effective learning (Romero-Hall 2017 ). On the other hand, previous studies have raised some challenges of using OSNs for educational purposes. For example, students tend to use OSNs as a social tool for entraining rather than an educational tool (Baran 2010 ; Gettman and Cortijo 2015 ). Moreover, the active use of OSNs on daily basis may develop students’ negative behavior such as addiction and distraction. In this context, Kitsantas et al. ( 2016 ) found that college students in the United States reported some concerns such as the OSNs usage can turn into addictive behavior, distraction, privacy threats, the negative impact on their emotional health, and the inability to complete the tasks on time. Another challenge of using OSNs as educational tools is gender differences. Kim and Yoo ( 2016 ) found some differences between male and female students concerning the negative impact of OSNs, for example, female students are more conserved about issues related to security, and the difficulty of task/work completion. Furthermore, innovation is a key aspect in the education process (Serdyukov 2017 ), however, using OSNs as an educational tool, students could lose creativity due to the easy access to everything using these platforms (Mirabolghasemi et al. 2016 ).

Review method

This study employed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach in order to answer the research questions. The SLR approach creates a foundation that advances knowledge and facilitates theory development for a specific topic (Webster and Watson 2002 ). Kitchenham and Charters ( 2007 ) defined SLR as a process of identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing all available research that is related to research questions, area of research, or new phenomenon. This study follows Kitchenhand and Charters’ guidelines (Kitchenham 2004 ), which state that the SLR approach involves three main stages: planning the review, conducting the review, and reporting the review results. There are several motivations for carrying out this systematic review. First, to summarize existing knowledge and evidence on research related to OSNs such as the theories, methods, and factors that influence student behaviors on these platforms. Second, to discover the current research focus and trends in this setting. Third, to propose a framework that classifies the factors that influence student behaviors on OSNs using the S-O-R model. The reasons for using S-O-R model in this study are twofold. First, S-O-R is a crucial theoretical framework to understand individuals’ behavior, and it has been extensively used in previous studies on consumer behavior (Wang and Chang 2013 ; Zhang et al. 2014 ; Zhang and Benyoucef 2016 ), and online users’ behavior (Islam et al. 2018 ; Luqman et al. 2017 ). Second, using the S-O-R model can provide a structured manner to understand the effect of the technological features of OSNs as environmental stimuli on individuals’ behavior (Luqman et al. 2017 ). Therefore, the application of the S-O-R model can provide a guide in the OSNs literature to better understand the potential stimulus and organism factors that drive a student’s behavioral responses in the context of OSNs. The SLR was guided by five research questions (see “ Introduction ” section), which provide an in-depth understanding of the research topic. The rationale and motivation beyond considering these questions are stated in Table 1 .

Stage one: Planning

Before conducting any SLR, it is necessary to clarify the goal and the objectives of the review (Kitchenham and Charters 2007 ). After identifying the review objectives and the research questions, in the planning stage, it is important to design the review protocol that will be used to conduct the review (Kitchenham and Charters 2007 ). Using a clear review protocol will help define criteria for selecting the literature source, database, and search keywords. Review protocol reduce research bias and specifies the research method used to perform a systematic review (Kitchenham and Charters 2007 ). Figure  1 shows the review protocol used for this study.

Review protocol

Stage two: Conducting the review

In this stage relevant literature was collected using a two-stage approach, which was followed by the removal of duplicated articles using Mendeley software. Finally, the researchers applied selection criteria to identify the most relevant articles to the current review. The details of each step of this stage are discussed below:

Literature identification and collection

This study used a two-stage approach (Webster and Watson 2002 ) to identify and collect relevant articles for review. In the first stage, this study conducted a systematic search to identify studies that address student behaviors and the use of online social networks using selected academic databases, including the Web of Science, Wiley Online Library ScienceDirect, Scopus, Emerald, and Springer. The choice of these academic databases is consistent with previous SLR studies (Ahmadi et al. 2018 ; Balaid et al. 2016 ; Busalim and Hussin 2016 ). Derived from the structure of this review and the research questions, these online databases were searched by focusing on title, abstract, and keywords. The search in these databases started in May 2019 using the specific keywords of “students’ behavior”, “online social networking”, “social networking sites”, and “Facebook”. This study performed several searches in each database using Boolean logic operators (i.e., AND and OR) to obtain a large number of published studies related to the review topic.

The results from this stage were 164 studies published between 2010 and 2018. In the second stage, important peer-reviewed journals were checked to ensure that all relevant articles were collected. We used the same keywords to search on information systems and education journals such as Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Information Management, Computers and Education, and Education and Information Technologies. These journals among the top peer-reviewed journals that publish topics related to students' behavior, education technologies, and OSNs. The result from both stages was 188 studies related to student behaviors in OSN. Table 2 presents the journals with more than two articles published in these areas.

Study selection

Following the identification of these studies, and after deleting duplicated studies, this study examined title, abstract, or the content of each study using three selection criteria: (1) a focus on student behavior; (2) an examination of the context of online social networks; (3) and a qualification as an empirical study. After applying these criteria, a total of 96 studies remained as primary studies for review. We further conducted a forward manual search on a reference list for the identified primary studies, through which an additional 8 studies were identified. A total of 104 studies were collected. As depicted in Fig.  2 , the frequency of published articles related to student behaviors in online social networks has gradually increased since 2010. In this regard, the highest number of articles were published in 2017. We can see that from 2010 to 2012 the number of published articles was relatively low and significant growth in published articles was seen from 2013 to 2017. This increase reveals that studying the behavior of students on different OSN platforms is increasingly attractive to researchers.

Timeline of publication

For further analysis, this study summarized the key topics covered during the review timeline. Figure  3 visualizes the development of OSNs studies over the years. Studies in the first three years (2010–2012) revolved around the use of OSNs by students and the benefits of using these platforms for educational purposes. The studies conducted between 2013 and 2015 mostly focused on the effect of using OSNs on student academic performance and achievement. In addition, in the same period, several studies examined important psychological issues associated with the use of OSNs such as anxiety, stress, and depression. In the years 2016 to 2018, OSNs studies were expanded to include cyber victimization behavior, OSN addiction behavior such as Facebook addiction, and how OSNs provide a collaborative platform that enables students to share information with their colleagues.

Evolution of OSNs studies over the years

Review results

To analyze the identified studies, this study guided its review using four research questions. Using research questions allows the researcher to synthesize findings from previous studies (Chan et al. 2017 ). The following subsection provides a detailed discussion of each of these research questions.

RQ1: What was the research regional context covered in previous studies?

As shown in Fig.  3 , most primary studies were conducted in the United States (n = 37), followed by Asia (n = 21) and Europe (n = 15). Relatively few studies were conducted in Australia, Africa, and the Middle East (n = 6 each), and only five studies were conducted in more than one country. Most of these empirical studies used university or college students to examine and validate the research models. Furthermore, many of these studies examined student behavior by considering Facebook as an online social network (n = 58) and a few studies examined student behavior on Microblogging platforms like Twitter (n = 7). The rest of the studies used multiple online social networks such as Instagram, YouTube, and Moodle (n = 31).

As shown in Fig.  4 , most of the reviewed studies are conducted in the United States (US). Furthermore, these studies considered Facebook as the main OSN platform. However, the focus on examining the usage behavior of Facebook in Western countries, particularly the US, is one of the challenges of Facebook research, because Facebook is used in many countries with 80% of its users are outside of the US (Peters et al. 2015 ).

Distribution of published studies by region

RQ2: What were the focus and trends of previous studies?

The results indicate that the identified primary studies for student behaviors on online social networks covered a wide spectrum of different research contexts. Further examination shows that there are five research streams in the literature.

The first research stream focused on using OSNs for academic purposes. The educational usage of OSNs relies on their purpose of use. OSNs can improve student engagement in a course and provide them with a sense of connection to their colleagues (Lambić 2016 ). However, the use of OSNs by students can affect their education as students can easily shift from using OSNs for educational to entertainment purposes. Thus, many studies under this stream focus on the effect of OSNs use on student academic performance. For instance, Lambić ( 2016 ) examined the effect of frequent Facebook use on the academic performance of university students. The results showed that students using Facebook as an educational tool to facilitate knowledge sharing and discussion positively impacted academic performance. Consistent with this result, Ainin et al. ( 2015 ) found that data from 1165 university students revealed a positive relationship between Facebook use and student academic performance. On the other hand, Paul et al. ( 2012 ) found that time spent on OSNs negative impacted student academic behavior. Moreover, the results statistically highlight that increased student attention spans resulted in increased time spent on OSNs, which eventually results in a negatively effect on academic performance. The results from Karpinski et al. ( 2013 ) showed that the effect of OSNs usage on student academic performance could differ from one country to another.

In summary, previous studies on the relationship between OSN use and academic performance show mixed results. From the reviewed studies, there were disparate results due to a few reasons. For example, recent studies found that multitasking plays an important role in determining the relationship between OSN usage and student academic performance. Karpinski et al. ( 2013 ) found a negative relationship between using social network sites (SNSs) and Grade Point Average (GPA) that was moderated by multitasking. Moreover, results from Junco ( 2015 ), illustrated that besides multitasking, student class rank is another determinant of the relationship between OSN platforms like Facebook and academic performance. The results revealed that senior students spent significantly less time on Facebook while doing schoolwork than freshman and sophomore students.

The second research stream is related to cyber victimization. Studies in this stream focused on negative interactions on OSNs like Facebook, which is the main platform where cyber victimization occurs (Kokkinos and Saripanidis 2017 ). Moreover, most studies in this stream examined the cyberbullying concept on OSNs. Cyberbullying is defined as “any behavior performed through electronic media by individuals or groups of individuals that repeatedly communicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to inflict harm or discomfort on others” (Tokunaga 2010 , p. 278). For instance, Gahagan et al. ( 2016 ) investigated the experiences of college students with cyberbullying on SNSs, and the results showed that 46% of the tested sample witnessed someone who had been bullied through the use of SNSs. Walker et al. ( 2011 ) conducted an exploratory study among undergraduate students to investigate their cyberbullying experiences. The results of the study highlighted that the majority of respondents knew someone who had been bullied on SNSs (Benson et al. 2015 ).

The third research stream focused on student addiction to OSNs use. Recent research has shown that excessive OSN use can lead to addictive behavior among students (Shettar et al. 2017 ). In this stream, Facebook was the main addictive ONS platform that was investigated (Shettar et al. 2017 ; Hong and Chiu 2016 ; Koc and Gulyagci 2013 ). Facebook addiction is defined as an excessive attachment to Facebook that interferes with daily activities and interpersonal relationships (Elphinston and Noller 2011 ). According to Andreassen et al. ( 2012 ), Facebook addiction has six general characteristics including salience, tolerance, mood modification, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. As university students frequently have high levels of stress due to various commitments, such as assignment deadlines, exams, and high pressure to perform, they tend to use Facebook for mood modification (Brailovskaia and Margraf 2017 ; Brailovskaia et al. 2018 ). On further analysis, it was noticed that Facebook addiction among students was associated with other factors such as loneliness (Shettar et al. 2017 ), personality traits (i.e., openness agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and extraversion) (Błachnio et al. 2017 ; Tang et al. 2016 ), and physical activities (Brailovskaia et al. 2018 ). Studies have examined student addiction behavior on different OSNs platforms. For instance, Ndasauka et al. ( 2016 ), empirically examined excessive Twitter use among college students. Kum Tang and Koh ( 2017 ) investigated the prevalence of different addiction behaviors (i.e., food and shopping addiction) and effective disorders among college students. In addition, a study by Chae and Kim (Chae et al. 2017 ) examined psychosocial differences in ONS addiction between female and male students. The results of the study showed that female students had a higher tendency towards OSNs addiction than male students.

The fourth stream of research highlighted in this review focused on student personality issues such as self-disclosure, stress, depression, loneliness, and self-presentation. For instance, Chen ( 2017 ) investigated the antecedents that predict positive student self-disclosure on SNSs. Tandoc et al. ( 2015 ) used social rank theory and Facebook envy to test the depression scale between college students. Skues et al. ( 2012 ) examined the relationship between three traits in the Big Five Traits model (neuroticism, extraversion, and openness) and student Facebook usage. Chang and Heo ( 2014 ) investigated the factors that explain the disclosure of a student’s personal information on Facebook.

The fifth reviewed research stream focused on student knowledge sharing behavior. For instance, Kim et al. ( 2015 ) identified the personal factors (self-efficacy) and environmental factors (strength of social ties and size of social networks) that affect information sharing behavior amongst university students. Eid and Al-Jabri ( 2016 ) examined the effect of various SNS characteristics (file sharing, chatting and online discussion, content creation, and enjoyment and entertainment) on knowledge sharing and student learning performance. Moghavvemi et al. ( 2017a , b ) examined the relationship between enjoyment, perceived status, outcome expectations, perceived benefits, and knowledge sharing behavior between students on Facebook. Figure  5 provides a mind map that shows an overview of the research focus and trends found in previous studies.

Reviewed studies research focus and trends

RQ3: What were the research methods used in previous studies?

As presented in Fig.  6 , previous studies used several research methods to examine student behavior on online social networks. Surveys were the method used most frequently in primary studies to understand the different types of determinants that effect student behaviors on online social networks, followed by the experiment method. Studies used the experiment method to examine the effect of online social networks content and features on student behavior, For example, Corbitt-Hall et al. ( 2016 ) had randomly assigned students to interact with simulated Facebook content that reflected various suicide risk levels. Singh ( 2017 ) used data mining techniques to collect student interaction data from different social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to classify student academic activities on these platforms. Studies that investigated student intentions, perceptions, and attitudes towards OSNs used survey data. For instance, Doleck et al. ( 2017 ) distributed an online survey to college students who used Facebook and found that perceived usefulness, attitude, and self-expression were influential factors towards the use of online social networks. Moreover, Ndasauka et al. ( 2016 ) used the survey method to assess the excessive use of Twitter among college students.

Research method distribution

RQ4: What were the major theories adopted in previous studies?

The results from the SLR show that previous studies used several theories to understand student behavior in online social networks. Table 3 depicts the theories used in these studies, with Use and Gratification Theory (UGT) being the most popular theory use to understand students' behaviors (Asiedu and Badu 2018 ; Chang and Heo 2014 ; Cheung et al. 2011 ; Hossain and Veenstra 2013 ). Furthermore, the social influence theory and the Big Five Traits model were applied in at least five studies each. The theoretical insights into student behaviors on online social networks provided by these theories are listed below:

Motivation aspect: since the advent of online social networks, many studies have been conducted to understand what motivates students to use online social networks. Theories such as UGT have been widely used to understand this issue. For example, Hossain and Veenstra ( 2013 ) conducted an empirical study to investigate what drives university students in the United States of America to use Social Networking Sites (SNSs) using the theoretical foundation of UGT. The study found that the geographic or physical displacement of students affects the use and gratification of SNSs. Zheng Wang et al. ( 2012a , b ) explained that students are motivated to use social media by their cognitive, emotional, social, and habitual needs as well as that all four categories significantly drive students to use social media.

Social-related aspect: Social theories such as Social Influence Theory, Social Learning Theory, and Social Capital Theory have also been used in several previous studies. Social Influence Theory determines what individual behaviors or opinions are affected by others. Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis (2003) defined social influence as “the degree to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should use a new system” . Cheung et al. ( 2011 ) applied Social Influence Theory to examine the effect of social influence factors (subjective norms, group norms, and social identity) on intentions to use online social networks. The empirical results from 182 students revealed that only Group Norms had a significant effect on student intentions to use OSNs. Other studies attempted to empirically examine the effect of other social theories. For instance, Liu and Brown ( 2014 ) adapted Social Capital Theory to investigate whether college students' self-disclosure on SNSs directly affected their social capital. Park et al. ( 2014a , b ) investigated the effect of using SNSs on university student learning outcomes using social learning theory.

Behavioral aspect: This study have noticed that the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Unified Theory of Acceptance, and Use of Technology (UTAUT) were also utilized as a theoretical foundation in a number of primary studies. These theories have been widely applied in the information systems (IS) field to provide insights into information technology adoption among individuals (Zhang and Benyoucef 2016 ). In the context of online social networks, there were empirical studies that adapted these theories to understand student usage behaviors towards online social networks such as Facebook. For example, Doleck et al. ( 2017 ) applied TAM to investigate college student usage intentions towards SNSs. Chang and Chen ( 2014 ) applied TRA and TPB to investigate why college students share their location on Facebook. In addition, a recent study used UTAUT to examine student perceptions towards using Facebook as an e-learning platform (Moghavvemi et al. 2017a , b ).

RQ5: What important factors were studied to understand student usage behaviors in OSNs?

Throughout the SLR, this study has been able to identify the potential factors that influence student behaviors in online social networks. Furthermore, to synthesize these factors and provide a comprehensive overview, this study proposed a framework based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model. The S-O-R model was developed in environmental psychology by Mehrabian and Russell ( 1974 ). According to Mehrabian and Russell ( 1974 ), environmental cues act as stimuli that can affect an individual’s internal cognitive and affective states, which subsequently influences their behavioral responses. To do so, this study extracted all the factors examined in 104 identified primary studies and classified them into three key concepts: stimulus, organism, and response. The details on the important factors of each component are presented below.

Online social networks stimulus

Stimulus factors are triggers that encourage or prompt students to use OSNs. Based on the SLR results, there are three stimulus dimensions: social stimulus, personal stimulus, and OSN characteristics. Social stimuli are cues embedded in the OSN that drive students to use these platforms. As shown in Fig.  7 , this study has identified six social stimulus factors including social support, social presence, social communication, social enhancement, social network size, and strength of social ties. Previous studies found that social aspects are a potential driver of student usage of OSNs. For instance, Kim et al. ( 2011 ) explored the motivation behind college student use of OSNs and found that seeking social support is one of the primary usage triggers. Lim and Richardson ( 2016 ) stated that using OSNs as educational tools will increase interactions and establish connections between students, which will enhance their social presence. Consistent with this, Cheung et al. ( 2011 ) found that social presence and social enhancement both have a positive effect on student use of OSNs. Other studies have tested the effect of other social factors such as social communication (Lee 2015 ), social network size, and strength of social ties (Chang and Heo 2014 ; Kim et al. 2015 ). Personal stimuli are student motivational factors associated with a specific state that affects their behavioral response. As depicted in Table 4 , researchers have tested different personal student needs that stimulate OSN usage. For instance, Zheng Wang et al. ( 2012a , b ) examined the emotional, social, and cognitive needs that drive students to use OSNs. Moghavvemi et al. ( 2017a , b ) empirically showed that students with a hedonic motivation were willing to use Facebook as an e-learning tool.

Classification framework for student behaviors in online social networks

OSN website characteristics are stimuli related to the cues implanted in an OSN website. In the reviewed studies, it was found that the most well studied OSN characteristics are usefulness and ease of use. Ease of use refers to student perceptions on the extent to which OSN are easy to use whereas usefulness refers to the degree that students believed that using OSN was helpful in enhancing their task performance (Arteaga Sánchez et al. 2014 ). Although student behaviors in OSNs have been widely studied, few studies have focused on OSN characteristics that stimulate student behaviors. For example, Eid and Al-Jabri ( 2016 ) examined the effect of OSN characteristics such as chatting, discussion, content creation, and file sharing. The results showed that file sharing, chatting, and discussion had a positive impact on student knowledge sharing behavior. In summary, Table 4 shows the stimulus factors identified in previous studies and their classification.

Online social networks organisms

Organism in this study’s framework refers to student internal evaluations towards using OSNs. There are four types of organism factors that have been highlighted in the literature. These types include personality traits, values, social, and cognitive reactions. Student personality traits influence the use of OSNs (Skues et al. 2012 ). As shown in Table 4 , self-esteem and self-disclosure were the most examined personality traits associated with student OSN behaviors. Self-esteem refers to an individual’s emotional evaluation of their own worth (Chen 2017 ). For example, Wang et al. ( 2012a , b ) examined the effect of the Big Five personality traits on student use of specific OSN features. The results found that students with high self-esteem were more likely to comment on other student profiles. Self-disclosure refers to the process by which individuals share their feelings, thoughts, information, and experiences with others (Dindia 1995 ). Previous studies have examined student self-disclosure in OSNs to explore information disclosure behavior (Chang and Heo 2014 ), location disclosure (Chang and Chen 2014 ), self-disclosure, and mental health (Zhang 2017 ). The second type of organism factors is value. It has been noticed that there are several value related factors that affect student internal organisms in OSNs. As shown in Table 4 , entertainment and enjoyment factors were the most common value examined in previous studies. Enjoyment is one of the potential drivers of student OSN use (Nawi et al. 2017 ). Eid and Al-Jabri ( 2016 ) found that YouTube is the most dominant OSN platform used by students for enjoyment and entertainment. Moreover, enjoyment and entertainment directly affected student learning performance.

Social organism refers to the internal social behavior of students that affect their use of OSNs. Students interact with OSN platforms when they experience positive social reactions. Previous studies have examined some social organism factors including relationship with faculty members, engagement, leisure activities, social skills, and chatting and discussion. The fourth type of organism factors is cognitive reactions. Parboteeah et al. ( 2009 ) defined cognitive reaction as “the mental process that occurs in an individual’s mind when he or she interacts with a stimulus” . The positive or negative cognitive reaction of students influences their responses towards OSNs. Table 5 presents the most common organism reactions that effect student use of OSNs.

Online social networks response

In this study’s framework, response refers to student reactions to OSNs stimuli and organisms. As shown in Table 5 , academic related behavior and negative behavior are the most common student responses towards OSNs. Studying the effect of OSN usage on student academic performance has been the most common research topic (Lambić 2016 ; Paul et al. 2012 ; Wohn and Larose 2014 ). On the other hand, other studies have examined the negative behavior of students during their usage of ONS, mostly towards ONS addiction (Hong and Chiu 2016 ; Shettar et al. 2017 ) or cyberbullying (Chen 2017 ; Gahagan et al. 2016 ). Table 6 summarizes student responses associated with OSNs use in previous studies.

Discussion and implications

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of online social networks used among the youth generation. Examining student behaviors on OSN platforms has increasingly attracted scholars. However, there has been little effort to summarize and synthesize these findings. In this review study, a systematic literature review was conducted to synthesize previous research on student behaviors in OSNs to consolidate the factors that influence student behaviors into a classification framework using the S-O-R model. A total of 104 journal articles were identified through a rigorous and systematic search procedure. The collected studies from the literature show an increasing interest in the area ever since 2010. In line with the research questions, our analysis offers insightful results of the research landscape in terms of research regional context, studies focus trends, methodological trends, factors, and theories leveraged. Using the S-O-R model, we synthesized the reviewed studies highlighting the different stimuli, organism, and response factors. We synthesize and classify these factors into social stimuli, personal stimuli, and OSN characteristics, organism factors; personality traits, value, social, and cognitive reaction, and response; academic related behavior, negative behavior, and other responses.

Research regional perspective

The first research question focused on research regional context. The review revealed that most of the studies were conducted in the US followed by European countries, with the majority focusing on Facebook. The results show that the large majority of the studies were based on a single country. This indicates a sustainable research gap in examining the multi-cultural factors in multiple countries. As OSN is a common phenomenon across many counties, considering the culture and background differences can play an essential role in understanding students’ behavior on these platforms. For example, Ifinedo ( 2016 ) collected data from four countries in America (i.e., USA, Canada, Argentina, and Mexico) to understand students’ pervasive adoption of SNSs. The results from the study revealed that the individualism–collectivism culture factor has a positive impact on students' pervasive adoption behavior of SNSs, and the result reported high level of engagement from students who have more individualistic cultures. In the same manner, Kim et al. ( 2011 ) found some cultural differences in use of the SNSs platforms between Korean and US students. For example, considering the social nature of SNSs, the study found that Korean students rely more on online social relationships to obtain social support, where US students use SNSs to seek entertainment. Furthermore, Karpinski et al. ( 2013 ) empirically found significant differences between US and European students in terms of the moderating effect of multitasking on the relationship between SNS use and academic achievement of students. The confirms that culture issues may vary from one country to another, which consequently effect students’ behavior to use OSNs (Kim et al. 2011 ).

Studies focus and trends

The second research question of this review focused on undersigning the topics and trends that have been discussed in extant studies. The review revealed evidence of five categories of research streams based on the research focus and trend. As shown in Fig.  5 , most of the reviewed studies are in the first stream, which is using OSNs for academic purposes. Moreover, the trend of these studies in this stream focus on examining the effect of using OSNs on students’ academic performance and investigating the use of OSNs for educational purposes. However, a number of other trends are noteworthy. First, as cyber victimization is a relatively new concept, most of the studies provide rigorous effort in exporting the concept, and the reasons beyond its existence among students; however, we have noticed that no effort has been made to investigate the consequences of this negative behavior on students’ academic performance, social life, and communication. Second, we identified only two studies that examined the differences between undergraduate and postgraduate students in terms of cyber victimization. Therefore, there are many avenues for further research to untangle the demographic, education level, and cultural differences in this context. Third, our analysis revealed that Facebook was the most studied ONS platform in terms of addiction behavior, however, over the last ten years, the rapid growth of using image-based ONS such as Instagram and Pinterest has attracted many students (Alhabash and Ma 2017 ). For example, Instagram represents the fastest growing OSNs among young adult users age between 18 and 29 years old (Alhabash and Ma 2017 ). The overwhelming majority of the studies focus on Facebook users, and very few studies have examined excessive Instagram use (Kırcaburun and Griffiths 2018 ; Ponnusamy et al. 2020 ). Although OSNs have many similar features, each platform has unique features and a different structure. These differences in OSNs platforms urge further research to investigate and understand the factors related to excessive and addiction use by students (Kircaburun and Griffiths 2018 ). Therefore, based on the current research gaps, future research agenda including three topics/trend need to be considered. We have developed research questions for each topic as a direction for any further research as shown in Table 7 .

Theories and research methods

The third and fourth research questions focused on understanding the trends in terms of research methods and theories leveraged in existing studies. In relation to the third research question, the review highlighted evidence of the four research methods (i.e., survey, experiment, focus group/interview, and mix method) with a heavy focus on using a quantitative method with the majority of studies conducting survey. This may call for utilizing a variety of other research methods and research design to have more in-depth understanding of students’ behavior on OSN. For example, we noticed that few studies leveraged qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups (n = 5). In addition, using mix method may derive more results and answer research questions that other methods cannot answer (Tashakkori and Teddlie 2003 ). Experimental methods have been used sparingly (n = 10), this may trigger an opportunity for more experimental research to test different strategies that can be used by education institutions to leverage the potential of OSN platforms in the education process. Moreover, considering that students’ attitude and behavior will change over time, applying longitudinal research method may offer opportunities to explore students’ attitude and behavior patterns over time.

The fourth research question focused on understanding the theoretical underpinnings of the reviewed studies. The analysis revealed two important insights; (1) a substantial number of the reviewed studies do not explicitly use an applied theory, and (2) out of the 34 studies that used theory, nine studies applied UGT to understand the motivation beyond using the OSN. Our findings categorized these theories under three aspects; motivational, social, and behavioral. While each aspect and theory offers useful lenses in this context, there is a lack of leveraging other theories in the extant literature. This motivates researchers to underpin their studies in theories that provide more insights into these three aspects. For example, majority of the studies have applied UGT to understand students’ motivate for using OSNs. However, using other motivational theories could uncover different factors that influence students' motivation for using OSNs. For example, self-determination theory (SDT) focuses on the extent to which individual’s behavior is self-motivated and determined. According to Ryan and Deci ( 2000 ), magnitude and types both shape individuals’ extrinsic motivation. The extrinsic motivation is a spectrum and depends on the level of self-determination (Wang et al. 2019 ). Therefore, the continuum aspect proposed by SDT can provide in-depth understanding of the extrinsic motivation. Wang et al. ( 2016 ) suggested that applying SDT can play a key role in understanding SNSs user satisfaction.

Another theoretical perspective that is worth further exploration relates to the psychological aspect. Our review results highlighted that a considerable number of studies focused on an important issue arising from the daily use of OSNs, such as excessive use/addiction (Koc and Gulyagci 2013 ; Shettar et al. 2017 ), Previous studies have investigated the behavior aspect beyond these issues, however, understanding the psychological aspect of Facebook addiction is worth further investigation. Ryan et al. ( 2014 ) reviewed Facebook addiction related studies and found that Facebook addiction is also linked to psychological factors such as depression and anxiety.

Factors that influence students behavior: S-O-R Framework

The fifth research question focused on determining the factors studies in the extant literature. The review analysis showed that stimuli factors included social, personal, and OSNs website stimuli. However, different types of stimuli have received less attention than other stimuli. Most studies leveraged the social and students’ personal stimuli. Furthermore, few studies conceptualized the OSNs websites characterises in terms of students beliefs about the effect of OSNs features and functions (e.g., perceived ease of use, user friendly) on students stimuli; it would be significant to develop a typology of the OSNs websites stimuli and systematically examine their effect on students’ attitude and behavior. We recommend applying different theories (as mentioned in Theories and research methods section) as an initial step to further identify stimuli factors. The results also highlight that cognitive reaction plays an essential role in the organism dimension. When students encounter stimuli, their internal evaluation is dominated by emotions. Therefore, the cognitive process takes place between students’ usage behavior and their responses (e.g., effort expectancy). In this review, we reported few studies that examined the effect of the cognitive reaction of students.

Response factors encompass students’ reaction to OSNs platforms stimuli and organism. Our review revealed an unsurprisingly dominant focus on the academic related behavior such as academic performance. While it is important to examine the effect of various stimuli and organism factors on academic related behavior and OSNs negative behavior, the psychological aspect beyond OSNs negative behavior is equallty important.

Limitations

Similar to other systematic review studies, this study has some limitations. The findings of our review are constrained by only empirical studies (journal articles) that meet the inclusion criteria. For instance, we only used the articles that explicitly examined students’ behavior in OSNs. Moreover, other different types of studies such as conference proceedings are not included in our primary studies. Further research efforts can gain additional knowledge and understanding from practitioner articles, books and, white papers. Our findings offer a comprehensive conceptual framework to understand students’ behavior in OSNs; future studies are recommended to perform a quantitative meta-analysis to this framework and test the relative effect of different stimuli factors.

Conclusions

The use of OSNs has become a daily habit among young adults and adolescents these days (Brailovskaia et al. 2020 ). In this review, we used a rigorous systematic review process and identified 104 studies related to students’ behavior in OSNs. We systematically reviewed these studies and provide an overview of the current state of this topic by uncovering the research context, research focus, theories, and research method. More importantly, we proposed a classification framework based on S-O-R model to consolidate the factors that influence students in online social networks. These factors were classified under different dimensions in each category of the S-O-R model; stimuli (Social Stimulus, Personal Stimulus, and OSN Characteristics), organism (Personality traits, value, social, Cognitive reaction), and students’ responses (academic-related behavior, negative behavior, and other responses). This framework provides the researchers with a classification of the factors that have been used in previous studies which can motivate further research on the factors that need more empirical examination (e.g., OSN characteristics).

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

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This paper is supported by Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) (Vote No. R.K130000.7840.4F245), and UTM Razak School of Engineering and Advanced Technology research grant or DPUTMRAZAK (Vote No. R.K13000.7740.4J313).

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Masrom, M.B., Busalim, A.H., Abuhassna, H. et al. Understanding students’ behavior in online social networks: a systematic literature review. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 18 , 6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00240-7

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Essay on Effects and Impact of Social Networking Sites in 700+ Words

• Updated on  
• Mar 5, 2024

Social networking sites are platforms where people can connect, socialise, learn and entertain. These platforms are now a part of the modern world. The first social networking site was SixDegrees, launched in 1997. Today, there are 4 billion users on social networking sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Whatsapp, etc. 

However, social networking sites have given rise to cybercrimes and online frauds, to which youngsters have fallen victim. Recently, Mark Zuckerburg, the CEO of Meta, was slammed by the New Mexico District Attorney for failing to protect children from sexual predators on Facebook and Instagram. 

Table of Contents

• 1.1 Facebook
• 1.2 YouTube
• 1.3 Instagram
• 2 Positive Effects
• 3 Negative Effects
• 4 Impact of Social Networking Sites on Our Health
• 5 Advantages of Not Using Social Networking Sites
• 6 Essay on Effects and Impact of Social Networking Sites PDF

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Positive Effects

• Social networking sites help us connect with our loved ones and distant friends.
• Social networking sites valuable sources of information and keep us updated on the latest trends. 
• Social networking sites can also used for educational purposes. These platforms contain educational content, discussions, and resources that support learning and skill development.
• Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook help businesses and individuals in networking, job searching, and career development.
• Social networking sites allow for real-time communication through features such as instant messaging, video calls, and live streaming.

Negative Effects

• Social networking sites are like addiction. They are designed to be engaging and use algorithms to keep users hooked. Once you start scrolling, you are presented with a constant stream of information, and notifications, and this desire for social validation can create addictive behaviours.
• Social networking sites have given birth to cybercrimes like cyberbullying, sexual harassment, hacking, malware and ransomware, spoofing, etc.
• Constant exposure to idealised representations of other’s lives on social media results in low self-esteem as we try to compare ourselves with others.
• The personal information users share on social networking sites raises concerns about privacy breaches and data misuse by hackers or third parties.
• Excessive use of social networking sites leads to time wastage and decreased productivity. Because of this, we are not able to focus on real-world tasks.
• Excessive use of social media also affects our mental health, as it results in anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances.
• Not everything we see on social networking sites is true. Social networking sites are a breeding ground for fake news, misinformation and rumours. 

Impact of Social Networking Sites on Our Health

• Studies have shown that there is a strong link between excessive use of social networking sites and our health.
• Staying late on social sites and constantly looking at computers or mobile devices results in weakened eyesight and headaches.
• Prioritising online interactions over face-to-face relationships can result in social isolation.
• Falling victim to cyber crimes can result in stress, anxiety and other mental issues.
• Addictive behaviour towards social networking sites can result in sleeping disturbance and mood swings.
• Social networking sites can contribute to the fear of missing out (FOMO). It can lead to feelings of anxiety or dissatisfaction with our own lives.

Advantages of Not Using Social Networking Sites

• One of the best advantages of not using social networking sites is that your data is secured. Your private information is private.
• Not using social networking can alleviate comparison, fear of missing out (FOMO), and the pressure to curate a perfect online persona.
• Without the constant distraction of social media, we will be able to build meaningful relationships.
• Continuous scrolling on social networking sites results in time wastage. We can save a lot of our precious time and indulge in quality work.
• Reducing social media presence can lead to improvements in mental health, including reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
• Avoiding social sites and cell phones at night can result in better sleep quality.

Essay on Effects and Impact of Social Networking Sites PDF

Ans: Social networking sites are platforms where people can connect, socialise, learn and entertain. Social networking sites help us connect with our loved ones and distant friends, can keep us updated on the latest trends and can also used for educational purposes. However, social networking sites are like addiction.  They are designed to be engaging and use algorithms to keep users hooked. Once you start scrolling, you are presented with a constant stream of information, and notifications, and this desire for social validation can create addictive behaviours.

Ans: Social networking sites can lead to addiction, time wastage, and cybercrimes like cyberbullying, sexual harassment, hacking, etc. The personal information users share on social networking sites raises concerns about privacy breaches and data misuse by hackers or third parties.

Ans: One of the best advantages of not using social networking sites is that your data is secured. Your private information is private. Not using social networking can alleviate comparison, fear of missing out (FOMO), and the pressure to curate a perfect online persona.

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Online social networks security and privacy: comprehensive review and analysis

• Survey and State of the Art
• Open access
• Published: 01 June 2021
• Volume 7 , pages 2157–2177, ( 2021 )

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• Ankit Kumar Jain   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9482-6991 1 ,
• Somya Ranjan Sahoo 2 &
• Jyoti Kaubiyal 1  

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With fast-growing technology, online social networks (OSNs) have exploded in popularity over the past few years. The pivotal reason behind this phenomenon happens to be the ability of OSNs to provide a platform for users to connect with their family, friends, and colleagues. The information shared in social network and media spreads very fast, almost instantaneously which makes it attractive for attackers to gain information. Secrecy and surety of OSNs need to be inquired from various positions. There are numerous security and privacy issues related to the user’s shared information especially when a user uploads personal content such as photos, videos, and audios. The attacker can maliciously use shared information for illegitimate purposes. The risks are even higher if children are targeted. To address these issues, this paper presents a thorough review of different security and privacy threats and existing solutions that can provide security to social network users. We have also discussed OSN attacks on various OSN web applications by citing some statistics reports. In addition to this, we have discussed numerous defensive approaches to OSN security. Finally, this survey discusses open issues, challenges, and relevant security guidelines to achieve trustworthiness in online social networks.

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Introduction

When the internet became popular in the mid-1990’s it made it possible to share information in ways that were never possible before. But a personal aspect was still lacking in sharing information [ 1 ]. And then in the early 2000s, social networking sites introduce a personal flavor to online information sharing which was embraced by the masses [ 2 ]. Social networking is the practice of expanding one’s contact with other individuals mostly through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and many more [ 3 ]. It can be used for both personal and business reasons [ 4 ]. It brings people together to talk, share ideas and interests and make new friends. Basically, it helps people from different geographical regions to collaborate [ 5 ]. Social networking platforms have always been found to be easy to use. This is the reason social media sites are growing exponentially in popularity and numbers. Figure  1 shows the basic constituents of social networks and the fields in which it is playing a major role [ 6 ]. As the figure shows, social networking can be used for entertainment, building business opportunities, making a career, improving one’s social skills, and forging relationships with other individuals [ 7 ]. Facebook and Myspace are among the most preferred social networking sites Since a large chunk of the online population utilize social media platform, it has become a significant medium to promote business, awareness campaign.

Constituents of online social networks

Since people consider social media as a personal communication tool, the importance to safeguard their information stored in these social networking sites is often taken for granted. With the passage of time, people are putting more and more information in different forms on social networks which can lead to unprecedented access to people’s and business information. The amount of information stored in social networks is very enticing for adversaries whose aim is to harm someone. They can create havoc worldwide with this huge amount of information in hands. Moreover, social media has become a great medium of advertisement for marketers and if they do not take social media security issues seriously enough, they make themselves vulnerable to a wide variety of threats and put their confidential data at risk. Also, social network can be classified into many types based on their uses. Social networks can be classified into four broad classifications namely, ‘social connections’, ‘multimedia sharing’, ‘professional’ and ‘discussion forums’. This section discusses the types of social networking sites and vulnerabilities and instances of phishing that have occurred on said classifications. Current problems are also stated with an emphasis on malicious content-based phishing attacks. Figure  2 shows different types of social networking sites can broadly be classified into.

Types of social networking sites

In Social connection, People use this network to connect with people and brands online. Although there are other types of social networking sites available online, this type certainly defines social media now. Sites that come under this category are ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Google + ’, ‘Myspace’. Although there are advantages of using these sites, it has some disadvantages also. These sites are vulnerable to phishing attacks in numerous ways. An intruder can make a portal that looks identical to a Facebook page. And then may lure users into entering into their credentials in different ways. Some of these methods are:

Sending fake messages which states that their Facebook account is about to be disabled in a few days.

The user may be tricked into clicking a link from the personal message sent by his friend stating that someone has uploaded personal pictures of the user in the given link.

Some attackers send a message claiming that the user’s account needs to be updated to use it further. And a link is given to download that update which contains an address of the malicious site.

Also, multimedia sharing networks are used to share pictures, videos, live videos, and other media online. They give an opportunity to users and brands to share their media online. Sites under this category are ‘YouTube’, ‘Flickr’, ‘Instagram’, ‘Snapchat’. Nowadays every social media has an “inbox” feature where anyone can send messages to their friends and chat with them. Recently, YouTube has also released this feature. This gives the attacker a great opportunity to phish his target. He can send a shortened URL in the message which redirects the user to a malicious website [ 8 ]. Since it is not easy to recognize a shortened URL, whether it is legitimate or not, attackers take advantage and obfuscate their malicious content in shortened URLs. Professional social networks are developed to provide career opportunities to their users. It may provide a general forum or may be focused on specific occupations or interest depending on the nature of the website. ‘LinkedIn’, ‘Classroom2.0’, ‘Pinterest’ are some of the examples of professional social networking sites. Since these social networking sites contain all professional information of the user including email id, an attacker can use these details to send a victim a personalized mail. These emails may be like emails claiming prize-money which contains the malicious link. Similarly, in discussion forums, people use these networks to discuss topics and share opinions. These networks are an excellent resource for market research and one of the oldest forms of social network. ‘Reddit’, ‘Quora’ and ‘Digg’ are some examples of popular discussion forums. In these forums, people also share links related to their research so that users can get more information about their topic of research. Some illegitimate users share malicious links to lead astray users to some phishing websites. In this way, phishing can also be done in discussion forums.

The lasting part of our paper is incorporated as follows. We present different statistics for OSN security in  " Statistics of online social network and media " section. Segment 3 particularizes the positive and negative impacts of online social networking. In Segment 4, we depict different threats that affect the user behavior in OSN platform. We describe the reason behind the OSN security issues in-depth in Segment 5. In  " Solutions for various threats " section, we discuss the defensive solutions for various threats. For user awareness in " Security-guidelines for OSNs user " section, we portray certain security rules to protect your system, account, and information. In the following section, i.e. in  " Open research issues and challenges " section, we portray the open research issues and challenges for OSN users. At last, we conclude our work in  " Conclusion " section.

Statistics of online social network and media

Near about 4 billion users exist in the online internet landscape [ 9 ]. Out of the total population on the internet, there are 2.7 billion monthly dynamic clients on Facebook, 330 million active users on Twitter, 320 million active users on Pinterest, as of Dec 30, 2020 [ 10 ]. Figure  3 illustrates the number of users on different social networking platforms [ 11 ]. According to a report from Zephoria, there is a 16 percent increase year over year in monthly active users of Facebook. Seven new profiles are created every second [ 12 ]. Users uploaded a total 350 million pictures per day. On average 510,000 comments are posted in every 60 s on Facebook, 298,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded. Since a huge amount of data is uploaded on Facebook, there is a high chance of having security risks. Anyone can post malicious content hidden inside multimedia data or with shortened uniform resource locators (URLs). There are around 83 million fake profiles which can be of illegitimate users or of professionals doing testing and research. Around 1 lakh websites are hacked daily [ 13 ].

Number of users on different social networking platforms

As per the data depicted in Fig.  4 , the use of social networking sites has amplified exponentially such that there is a large amount of data and information available on these sites which has increased risks of information leakage and has opened doors for several cyber-crimes like data interception, privacy spying, copyright infringement, and information fraudulence. Although some Social Networking Sites like Twitter do not allow disclosing private information to users, some experienced attackers can infer confidential information by analyzing user’s posts and the information they share online. The personal information we share online could give cybercriminals enough to get our email and passwords. We have taken cognizance of popularity and narrowed down the list of networks to keep the scope of study feasible. By extension, the chosen social networks employ state-of-the-art defence strategies. Thus, any possible attacks on these networks would employ state-of-the-art techniques. Transitively, the analysis holds relevance for other social networks as well.

Number of users on social media worldwide (year-wise)

Insights in Fig.  5 presents a positioning of the most banned sorts of hacking. It is as indicated by the reaction of adults to a survey in the United States during January 2021. It reports around 44% of the respondents accept that digital secret activities ought to have the most severe punishments.

Most punishable types of hacking in 2021

Figure  6 portrays the most vulnerable way for information breaches worldwide in 2021, sorted by share of identities exposed [ 14 ]. According to the recent report, 91.6 percent of data breaches resulted in impersonation or stolen identities.

Leading cause of data breaches worldwide in 2020

Nowadays geotagged photos are very popular. People tag their geographical locations along with their pictures and share them online. Some applications have this feature of geotagging which automatically tags the current location inside a picture until and unless the user turns it off manually. This can expose one's personal information like where one lives, where one is traveling, and invites thieves who can target one for robbery. When someone updates their status with their whereabouts on a regular basis, it can pose a threat to their life through possible stalking and robbery. According to a report by Heimdal Security, around 6 lakh Facebook accounts are hacked daily [ 15 ]. Individuals who devote more time on social media and are probable to like the posts of their close friends. The hackers take advantage of this trust. Hackers can also use social media to sway elections. The most popular attacks on social media are like-jacking, which occurs when attackers post fake Facebook like buttons to web pages, phishing sites, and spam emails. The statistics in Table 1 entail the percentage of internet users in the United States who have shared their passwords on their online accounts and to their loved ones as of May 2020. It is sorted by age group. The entire survey depicted that 74% of respondents aged more than 65 and above do not share online passwords with family and friends.

With this remarkable expansion in social networking threats and security issues, numerous specialists and security associations have proposed different solutions for alleviating them. Such solutions incorporate PhishAri for phishing detection [ 16 ], spam detection [ 17 ], GARS for cyber grooming detection [ 18 ], clickjacking detection system [ 19 ], framework to detect cyber espionage [ 20 ], SybilTrap to detect Sybil attacks [ 21 ], worm detection system to detect malware [ 22 ]. Users themselves must be alert while posting any media or information on social networking sites. A strong password should be adopted, and it must not be shared with anyone. One should check the URL while visiting a website and must not click any malicious links. These habits could help a user to some extent to be protected against various cyber-attacks on social media. Table 2 presents a collection of the greatest online information breaks via social media worldwide as of November 2020 [ 23 ].

Positive and negative effects of online social networks based on users perspective

Social media has changed the manner in which individuals see the world and collaborate with each other. The near-universal accessibility and minimal effort of long-range informal communication locales, for example, Facebook and Twitter have assisted millions to stay connected with family and friends [ 28 ]. Similar to many technological revolutions, social networks also have a negative side. We describe some of the positive and negative effects of social networking based on the researchers' perceptions described below.

Positive factors of OSN

The various positive factors that influence the user to create and use the environments are maintaining social relationship, marketing the product and platforms, rescue efforts, and finding common group of people to communicate and share the thoughts.

Maintaining social relationships Social networking sites have proven to be convenient in keeping up with the lives of others who matter to us. It helps to nurture friendship and other social relationships [ 29 ].

Marketing platform Professionals can post work experience and build a network of professionally oriented people on sites such as LinkedIn or Plaxo which are career-building social networks [ 30 ]. They help discover better job opportunities. Marketers can influence their audience by posting advertisements on social networking sites [ 31 ].

Rescue efforts Social media sites play a huge role in rescue and recovery efforts during calamities and disasters [ 32 ]. They connect people during such crucial times when the conventional societal structure has broken down. Bulletins are easily managed by social networking sites which can reunite missing family members. The public can be kept informed using utilities extended by essential service providers through online social networking. Real-time local updates on social media help government officials to better understand the circumstances and make more informed decisions.

Finding common groups Social networking sites help people find groups with common interest [ 33 ]. People can share their likes and dislikes, interests and obsessions and thought and views to these groups which contribute to an open society.

Negative factors of OSN

When the general users use the social network platform, he/she face a lot of trouble that identified by various researchers based on security parameter. Like,

Online intimidation: while making friends is easier on social media, predators can also find victims easily [ 34 ]. The anonymity provided by social networks has been a consistent issue for social media users. Earlier someone was bullied only face-to-face [ 35 ]. Nonetheless, now any individual can bully someone online anonymously.

The exploitation of private information: although creating an account on social networking sites is free of charge, they make their money mostly from the advertisements they show on their websites [ 36 ]. The data once gathered is sold to brokers in relationships without the consent of social media users. Moreover, adversaries can also extract confidential information about their targets from these websites using different attack techniques.

Isolation : social media has surely improved the connection between users but conversely it has also averted real-life social interaction [ 37 ]. People find it easier to follow the posted comments of people they know rather than personally visit or call them [ 38 ].

General addiction: by the records we can depict that social media is more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. People often feel empty and depressed if they do not check their social media account for a full day.

This paper presents a systematic and in-depth study of threats and security issues that are current and are emerging. More precisely, this study encompasses all the conventional threats that affect the majority of the clients in social networks and most of the modern threats that are prevalent nowadays with an emphasis on teenagers and children. The principle objective of this paper is to give knowledge into the social network’s security and protection. It introduces the reader to all the possible dimensions of online social networks and issues related to them. Our analysis throws light on the prevalent open challenges and issues that need to be discussed to enhance the trustworthiness of online social networks.

The remaining paper is systematized as: " Statistics of online social network and media " section describes various threats that are currently prevalent in social media. " Positive and negative effects of online social networks based on users perspective " section provides reasons for social media security issues.  " Various threats on online social network and media " section discusses solutions that are given by various researchers, " Reasons behind online social media security issues " section consists of some security- guidelines suggested for users, some open issues and challenges in online social media is conferred in  " Solutions for various threats " section, finally, Segment 7 presents the conclusion.

Various threats on online social network and media

Being the technology-based society that we are, and with the prevalence of the internet, we have extended our interaction through the electronic world of the internet. Following are the attacks which users have been observing right from the beginning of social networks.

We have divided threats into three categories i.e. conventional threats, modern threats, and targeted threats (as shown in Fig.  7 ). Conventional threats include threats that users have been experiencing from the beginning of the social network. Modern threats are attacks that use advanced techniques to compromise accounts of users and targeted attacks are attacks that are targeted on some particular user which can be committed by any user for varied personal vendettas.

Classification of threats

Conventional threats

Spam attack.

Spam is the term used for unsolicited bulk electronic messages [ 39 ]. Although email is the conventional way to spread spam, social networking platform is more successful in spreading spam [ 40 ]. The communication details of legitimate users can easily be obtained from company websites, blogs, and newsgroup [ 27 ]. It is not difficult to convince the targeted client to read spam messages and trust it to be protected [ 41 ]. Most of the spams are commercial advertisements but they can also be used to collect sensitive information from users or may contain viruses, malware or scams [ 28 ].

Malware attack

Malware is a noxious programming which is explicitly evolved to contaminate or access a computer system, ordinarily without the information of the user [ 42 ]. An intruder can utilize numerous ways to spread malware and contaminate devices and networks [ 43 ]. For instance, malware may get installed by clicking a malicious URL, on the client’s framework or it might divert the client to a phony site which endeavors to acquire private data from the client. An attacker can inject some malicious script in URLs and clicking on that URLs can make that script run on a system that may collect sensitive information from that system [ 44 ]. In social networking platforms, the malware uses Online Social Network’s (OSN) structure to propagate itself such as the number of vertices, number of edges, average shortest path, and longest path.

A phishing attack is a kind of social engineering attack where the aggressor can acquire sensitive and confidential information like username, password and credit card details of a user through fake websites and emails which appears to be real [ 45 ]. An invader can impersonate an authentic user and may use his/her identity to send fake messages to other users via a social networking platform which contains malicious URL [ 46 ]. That URL might readdress a consumer to the phony website where it asks for personal information [ 47 ]. In the case of SNS, an assailant needs to attract the client to a phony page where he can execute a phishing attack. To accomplish this, the assailant uses different social engineering methodologies. For example, he can send a message to a user which says, “your personal pictures are shared on this website, please check!”. By clicking on that URL, the user is redirected to a fake website which looks like some legitimate social networking site.

Identity theft

In this sort of assault, the assailant utilizes someone else’s identity like social security number, mobile, number, and address, without their permission to commit attackers [ 48 ]. With the help of these details, the attacker can easily gain access to a victim's friend list and demand confidential information from them using different social engineering techniques [ 49 ]. Since the attacker impersonates a legitimate user, he can utilize that profile in any conceivable way which could seriously affect authentic clients [ 50 ].

Modern threats

Cross-site scripting attack.

Cross-site scripting is a very prevalent attack vector among infiltrators. The attack is abbreviated as XSS and is also known as “Self-XSS” [ 51 ]. Fundamentally, the attack executes a malicious JavaScript on the victim’s browser through different techniques. These are classified as persistent, reflected, and DOM-based XSS attacks [ 52 ]. The browser can be hijacked with just a single click of a button which may send a malicious script to the server [ 53 ]. This script is boomeranged back to the victim and gets executed on the browser. Attractive links and buttons in popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can trick the user into following URLs [ 54 ]. Worse yet, some users may feel compelled to copy and paste JavaScript containing links onto their browser's address bar [ 55 ]. These attacks can either steal information or act as spyware. Such attacks can also hijack computers to launch attacks on unsuspecting users. The real perpetrator of the attack is hidden behind the compromised machine.

Profile cloning attack

In this attack, the assaulter clones the users’ profile about which he has a prior knowledge. The attacker can use this cloned profile either in the same or in a different social networking platform to create a trusting relationship with the real user’s friends [ 56 ]. Once the connection is established, the attacker tricks the victim’s friends to believe in the validity of the fake profile and catch confidential information successfully which is not shared in their public profiles. This attack can also be used to commit other types of cyber-crimes like cyberbullying, cyber-stalking, and blackmailing [ 45 ].

In hijacking, the adversary compromises or takes control of a user’s account to carry out online frauds [ 57 ]. The sites without multifactor authentication and accounts with weak passwords are more vulnerable to hijacking as passwords can be obtained through phishing [ 58 ]. If we do not have multifactor authentication, then we lack a secondary line of defense [ 59 ]. Once an account is hijacked, the hijacker can send messages, share the malicious link, and can change the account information which could harm the reputation of the user [ 60 ].

Inference attack

Inference attack infers a handler’s confidential information which the user may not want to disclose, through other statistics that is put out by the user on some Social Networking Site (SNS) [ 61 ]. It uses data mining procedures on visibly available data like the user’s friend list and network topology [ 62 ]. Using this technique, an attacker can find an organization’s secret information or a user’s geographical and educational information [ 45 ].

Sybil attack

In Sybil attack, a node claims multiple identities in a network [ 63 ]. It can be harmful to social networking platforms as they contain a huge number of users who are coupled through a peer-to-peer network [ 64 ]. Peers are the computer frameworks which are associated with one another by means of the internet and they can share records straightforwardly without the need of a central server [ 32 ]. One online entity can make several fake identities and use those identities to distribute junk information, malware or even affect the reputation and popularity of an organization. For instance, a web survey can be manipulated utilizing various Internet Protocol (IP) delivers to submit an enormous number of votes, and aggressor can outvote a genuine client [ 33 ].

Clickjacking

Clickjacking is a procedure in which the invader deceives a user to click on a page that is different from what he intended to click [ 65 ]. It is also known as User Interface redress attack. The attacker exploits the vulnerability of the browsers to perform this attack [ 66 ]. He loads another page over the page which the user wants to access, as a transparent layer [ 67 ]. The two known variations of clickjacking are likejacking and cursorjacking. The front layer shows the substance with which the client can be baited. At the point when the client taps on that content he actually taps the like button. The more individuals like the post, the more it spreads.

In cursorjacking attacker replaces the actual cursor with a custom cursor image. The actual cursor is shifted from its actual mouse position. In this manner, the intruder can trick a consumer to click on the malicious site with clever positioning of page elements [ 68 ].

De-anonymization attack

In quite a lot of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, users can hide or protect their real identity before releasing any data by using an alias or fabricated name [ 69 ]. But if a third party wants to find out the real identity of the user, it can be done by simply linking the information leaked by these social networking sites [ 70 ]. They use strategies such as tracking cookies, network topologies, and user group enrollment to uncover the client’s genuine identity [ 71 ]. It is a sort of information mining method in which mysterious information is cross-referred to other information sources to re-recognize the unknown information [ 60 ]. An attacker can collect information about the group membership of a user by stealing history from their browser and by combining this history with the data collected. Thus the attacker can de-anonymize the user who visits that attacker’s website [ 72 ].

Cyber espionage

Cyber espionage is an act that uses cyber capabilities to gather sensitive information or intellectual property with the intention of communicating it to opposing parties [ 73 ]. These attacks are motivated by greed for monetary benefits and are popularly used as an integral part of military activity or as a demonstration of illegal intimidation [ 74 ]. It might bring about a loss of competitive advantage, materials, information, foundation or death toll. A social engineer can perform social engineering assaults using social networking sites. He can acquire important data like worker’s assignment, email address, and so forth utilizing social networking sites [ 75 ].

Targeted threats

• Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is the use of electronic media such as emails, chats, phone conversations, and online social networks to bully or harass a person [ 76 ]. Unlike traditional bullying, cyberbullying is a continuous process [ 77 ]. It is continuously maintained through social media [ 78 ]. The attacker repeatedly sends intimidating messages, sexual remarks, posts rumors, and sometimes publishes embarrassing pictures or videos to harass a person [ 79 ]. He can also publish personal or private information about the victim causing embarrassment or humiliation. Cyberbullying can also happen accidentally. It is very difficult to find out the tone of the sender over text messages, instant messages, and emails. But the repeated patterns of such emails, texts, and online posts are rarely accidental [ 80 ].

• Cyber grooming

Cyber grooming is establishing an intimate and emotional relationship with the victim (usually children and adolescents) with the intention of compelling sexual abuse [ 81 ]. The principle point of cyber grooming is to acquire the trust of the youngster and through which intimate and individual information can be attained from the child [ 82 ]. The data is often voluptuous in nature through sexual conversations, pictures, and videos which gives the attacker an advantage to threaten and blackmail the child [ 83 ]. Assailants frequently approach teenagers or kids through counterfeit identity in child-friendly sites, leaving them vulnerable and uninformed of the fact that they have been drawn closer with the end goal of cyber grooming. However, the victim can also unknowingly initiate the grooming process when they get rewarding offers, for example, cash in return for contact details or personal photographs of themselves. In some cases, the victim knows about the fact that he/she is conversing with an adult which can prompt further commitment in sexual activities. However, it is with the individual under the age of consent and in this manner constitutes a crime. The anonymity and accessibility of advanced media permit groomers to move toward various youngsters simultaneously, exponentially increasing the instances of cyber grooming. Despite what might be expected, there are a couple of instances of feelings for the crime of cyber grooming worldwide, as 66% of the world's nations have no particular laws with respect to cyber grooming of children [ 84 ].

Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking is the observing of an individual by the means of internet, email or some other type of electronic correspondence that outcomes in fear of violence and interferes with the mental peace of that individual [ 85 ]. It involves the invasion of a person’s right to privacy. The attacker tracks the personal or confidential information of the victims and uses it to threaten them by continuous and persistent messages throughout the day. This conduct makes the victim exceptionally worried for his own safety and actuates a type of trouble, fear or disturbance in him [ 86 ]. Most of the individuals these days share their personal information like telephone number, place of residence, area, and schedule in their social networking profile. In addition, they likewise share their location-based data. An assailant can gather this data and use it for cyberstalking [ 87 ].

Reasons behind online social media security issues

Social media addresses one of the most unique, unstructured, and unregulated datasets anyplace in the advanced world and this scene is arising quickly all over the globe [ 88 ]. Every day millions of people upload their photos and other multimedia content on social media to share it with their friends. This is prompting the development of digital risk monitoring [ 89 ]. The development of web-based media has presented new security standards that put clients (representatives, clients, and partners) solidly in the aggressor’s line of sight. The social network has become the new digital milestone where attackers think that it's simple to target victims. It has presented one of the biggest, most powerful dangers to authoritative security. Attackers influence social media for the accompanying three reasons (as shown in Fig.  8 ):

The scale of social media: since a huge mass of people spend their time on social media for various purposes, attacks can spread like any other viral trend. The attacker can use hashtags, clickbait, and trending topics to announce their malware which might be focused on everyone or to some particular gathering of individuals. This represents a tremendous challenge for security experts to overcome physically.

Trusted nature of social media: adversaries take advantage of the trusting nature of social media. People sometimes accept an unknown friend request on the basis of mutual friends that requester has. They easily visit the link posted by their friends without thinking much about a possible security breach. Over one-third of the total population on social media acknowledge unknown friend requests, making online media perhaps the best mode for acquiring the trust of a target.

Invisibility to security team: majority of people in the world spend most of their time on social media networks. Observing this enormous populace is extremely troublesome as security teams do not have tools to broaden their perceptibility beyond a specific border into the social media domain where employees are intensively vulnerable to be compromised.

Reasons for social media security issues

Solutions for various threats

Many researchers in both academia and industries are constantly trying to find solutions for the aforementioned threats in social media. They have proposed many solutions and some approaches to combat these threats. This section provides a discussion on various methods and approaches proposed by different researchers on SNS security. We have classified solutions into two groups namely social network operator solutions and academic solutions. Figure  9 shows the classification.

Classification of solutions to threats

Social network operator solutions

Authentication mechanism.

To make sure that only a legitimate user is logging or registering in a social network and not a socialbot, several OSN uses authentication procedures such as CAPTCHA, multi-factor authentication, and photos-of-friend identification. For instance, the leading social networks like Twitter and Facebook use two-factor authentication principles. This principle uses a login password and a verification code received through a mobile device. This helps to mitigate the risk of an account being compromised and prevents an attacker from hijacking a legitimate account and posting malicious content.

Security and privacy setting

Many social networking sites provide configurable security and privacy setting to empower the client to shield their personal information from undesirable access by outsiders or applications. For instance, the Facebook client can modify their security setting and select the audience (like friends, friends of friends, and everybody) in the network who can see their details, pictures, posts, and other sensitive information. Moreover, Facebook additionally permits its users to either acknowledge or reject the access of third-party applications to their personal information. Many social networking sites are equipped with security measures that are internal to the system. They ensure users of the network against spams, counterfeit profiles, spammers, and different risks.

Report users

Online social networks protect the young generation and teenagers from being harassed by providing the facility to report any form of abuse or policy violations by any user in their network. For instance, if a user sees something on Facebook that is objectionable to the individual’s sentiments, but it doesn’t violate the Facebook terms then the user can utilize the report links to send a message to the one who posted it asking him to take it down or remove. When Facebook receives reports, it is reviewed and removed according to the Facebook community standards.

Academic research-based solutions

Phishing detection.

Phishing distresses the privacy and security of many traditional web applications such as websites, social networking sites, emails, and blogs. Consequently, several anti-phishing techniques have been developed to detect phishing attacks. Many researchers have put forward anti-phishing procedures which are based on techniques that try to identify phishing websites and phishing URLs. As phishing attacks are becoming more and more pervasive in online social networking sites, the research community has suggested specialized solutions for phishing attacks in a social networking environment. For instance, Aggarwal et al. proposed the PhishAri technique for real-time identification of phishing attacks occurring on Twitter. It utilized specific Twitter features like account age and number of followers to detect if the posted tweet is phishing or safe [ 16 ].

Cyberbullying detection

Although detecting cyberbullying is more complex than detecting racist language and spam [ 90 ], some researchers have tried to detect it using more complex document representation and additional information about victims and bullies [ 91 ].

Machine learning techniques can be applied to detect cyberbullying [ 92 ]. Rather than using only words and emoticons which expresses insults, obscenity, and typical cyberbullying words [ 93 ], it can also use some additional information like the gender and personality of the participants in a suspected cyberbullying event [ 94 ]. To deal with uncertainty and imprecision, a fuzzy rule-based system can be used which is a mathematical tool. To optimize the results genetic algorithms are the direct and stochastic methods.

For addressing the problem of online cyber grooming, machine learning techniques appear to be an effective measure. Michalopoulos et al. [ 18 ] presented the Grooming Attack Recognition System (GARS) a technique to recognize, analyze and control grooming attacks so that children could be protected against online attacks. It calculates the total risk value which identifies grooming threats to which a child is exposed by analyzing conversations by the child. A threshold is predefined for risk value and when the total risk value crosses the predefined threshold, an alarm mechanism is prompted. This alarm mechanism also simultaneously transmits an on-the-spot warning message to the parent. A colored signal is generated to warn the child about the degree of danger in a conversation. Escalante et al. [ 95 ] evaluated the use and performance of a profile to detect sexual predators. Through this evaluation, they also investigated aggressive texting.

Balduzzi et al. [ 19 ] designed and developed an automated system that can analyze web pages to protect the user against clickjacking attacks. It consists of a code that can detect overlapping clickable elements. And in addition to this solution, they also adopted the NoScript tool, which has an anti-clickjacking feature included in it. Anas et al. [ 96 ] proposed a solution in which other visual components are added which guarantees that the user is not able to proceed with his actions until and unless he has visibility over the control in place. To enable the working of this solution, the existence of a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) object containing a pattern was ensured. Some checkpoints are generated based on user interaction. User must follow those checkpoints without a single mouse click. In addition to it, a panel area shows the third-party reference identity. And to ensure the integrity of actions, user interface verification control is used. This technique can be applied in two ways, one is by generating random patterns in which the user has to follow that pattern to further propagate his action and the other way is to ask the user to draw that specific pattern which he has already registered. Microsoft introduced X-FRAME-OPTIONS, an Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) header sent on HTTP responses, as a defense against frame busting and clickjacking in Internet Explorer 8. JavaScript can also be used as a defense against clickjacking [ 97 ].

Encryption techniques are available for devices on recent versions of Android and iOS. If a device is stolen, the thief cannot read the contents if encryption is enabled. Further, any attempts to read the information from internal or external memory is thwarted by the existence of a device password [ 98 ]. There are various technologies which can be used against stalkers like smartphone fingerprint lock antivirus, specialized stalker app detection software, firewalls, and privacy guards. Device encryption can be used against spyware, stalker apps and device theft [ 98 ]. Frommholz et al. have described machine learning techniques for detecting cyberstalking using textual analysis altogether [ 99 ].

Cyber espionage is a kind of targeted attack. Sahoo et al. described the concept of an ATA detection framework and introduced a system design checklist which is explicitly designed for identifying targeted attacks [ 20 ]. Organizations can create their own team to fight against targeted attacks and analyze vulnerabilities, in their and as well as in other companies’ code. Google has its own team to analyze vulnerabilities and bugs in their code. Each company has its own profile that is different from each other. So, each company must take appropriate steps according to their profile to implement security measures to design and implement security controls to address various security risks. Organizations can also be secured to some extent against targeted attacks by means of authentication systems. Earlier only password was used to protect the data, but now a two-factor authentication system is used which is a combination of password and some pin or biometric details. It is more secure than using a single factor i.e. password. The data which is no longer required for business purposes should be removed from the company's network. Keeping those records may create the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information in an organization [ 100 ].

Fake profile

The author in Ref. [ 101 ] describes one model to distinguish the counterfeit accounts and profiles. They extracted some user profile contents from LinkedIn platform and processed those profiles content to extract different features. Subsequent to preprocessing of profiles through principal component, a training set is created utilizing the resilient backpropagation algorithm in a neural network. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) is utilized for characterization of profile. The author in Ref. [ 102 ] proposed a model that detects bot net using adaptive multilayered-based machine learning approach. The proposed work presented a bot detection framework based on decision trees which effectively detects P2P botnets. Also, the author in Ref. [ 103 ] proposed an ensemble classification model for the detection of fake news that has achieved a better accuracy compared to the other state-of-the-art. The proposed model extracts important features from the fake news datasets, and the extracted features are then classified using the ensemble model comprising of three popular machine learning models namely, decision tree, random forest, and extra tree classifier. Furthermore, the author in Ref. [ 104 ] presented a systematic literature review of existing clone node detection schemes with some theoretical and analytical survey of the existing centralized and distributed schemes for the detection of clone nodes in static WSNs environment.

Sybil detection

Al-Qurishi et al. [ 105 ] proposed a new Sybil detection system that uses a deep learning model to predict a Sybil attack accurately. This model consists of three modules namely, one data harvesting module, one feature extracting module and a deep regression model. All these three modules work in a systematic form together to analyze a user’s profile on Twitter. Rahman et al. gave a model named SybilTrap which is a graph-based semi-supervised learning system that uses both content-based and structure-based techniques to detect Sybil attacks. It is based on a semi-supervised algorithm which utilizes the interaction graph information of a node where labeled information of nodes flows through unlabeled nodes. It gathers information about the network and its users and uses this information to detect malicious users. This system is resistant to various strategic attacks such as targeted or random attacks. It is designed to work under any condition and is applicable to all existing social networks regardless of their level of trust [ 21 ].

Spam detection

Rathore et al. proposed a framework called SpamSpotter to solve the issue of spam attack on Facebook. It is based on the intelligent decision support system (IDSS). It gathers all relevant information from the user profile with the help of a decision process in IDSS and then analyzes it by mapping user data to the classification of a user profile as a spammer or legitimate. It resolves some of the issues and challenges (1) It solves the issue of an inadequate set of features that exist in most of spammer detection system. (2) It resolves the issue of uncertainty about critical pieces of Facebook information and public unavailability. (3) The use of the IDSS system resolves the issue of low accuracy and high response time. The use of machine learning classifiers in IDSS provides fast response time that is very essential to detecting spam on Facebook [ 17 ].

Faghani and Saidi [ 106 ] found that the visiting behavior of the social network members affects the propagation of XSS worms. The worm propagates slower when members mostly visit their friends rather than strangers. It can also be slowed down by the clustered nature of social networks. This is so because infected profiles in the early stages of XSS worm propagation lead to faster propagation of worm. Xu et al. [ 22 ] developed an approach to detect worms which leverages properties of online social network and propagation characteristics of OSN worms. It first builds a surveillance network based on the properties of the social graph to gather evidence against suspicious worm propagation. It monitors only a small fraction of user accounts to maximize surveillance coverage. To ensure that noise is absent in a surveillance network, a scheme is further proposed. Table 3 represents the probability of encountering different types of threats in different platforms discussed in “ Introduction ” section. It shows that the platforms used for social connections are the most vulnerable among all platforms.

Other contributions

The author in Ref. [ 107 ] proposed a novel algorithm to reform any traffic domain into a complex network using the principles of decentralized Social Internet of Things (SIoT). With the help of social networking, concepts integrate into the Internet of Things (IoT), the concept of SIoT has been proposed. The idea of the article is, every vehicle acts as a smart thing, communicate with nearby vehicles within a particular distance in a decentralized manner and together form a complex network. Also, the author in Ref. [ 108 ] proposed propose a privacy-preserving ICN forwarding scheme based on homomorphic encryption for wireless ad hoc networks to protect the private information of the user. The trust-based model proposed by the author in Ref. [ 109 ]. The author proposed a secure trusted hypothetical mathematical model for ensuring secure communication among devices by computing the individual trust of each node. In addition to this, the author proposed a decision-making model, that integrated with the hypothetical model for further speeding up the real-time communication decision within the network.

Comparative analysis with other state of art techniques

This section compared our survey related to different threat analysis and their defensive approaches with other state of art techniques and survey to show the novelty shows in Table 4 .

Security-guidelines for OSNs user

Nowadays, online social media and network have become an integral part of everyone’s life. As the reputation of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. The number of users increases exponentially every year. So, it becomes a necessity to secure users on these platforms. Below are some security-guidelines for users which they can practice keeping themselves reasonably secure. We have tried to give security-guidelines in two ways. First, it has been described in a general form and then it is described platform-wise (as shown in Fig.  10 ).

Security guidelines for users

General guidelines

Use a strong password: for maintaining the security of accounts, users should choose a strong password. It should not be too short as short passwords can be easily guessed. It should be long enough and must contain alphanumeric values with some special characters [ 119 ]. Users should not use the same password which they use for other accounts because if somehow an attacker gets to know that password, he can compromise all accounts of that user. So, choosing a strong password can help a user safeguard their account and profile from unauthorized access [ 120 ].

Limit location sharing: nowadays sharing location has become a trend. Many social networking sites have also introduced the feature of geotagging which automatically tags the geographical location of the user when the user uploads any multimedia on social media [ 121 ]. The user has to switch it to manual so that it does not tag location automatically. Sharing location online makes a user vulnerable to real-life crimes like robbery. So, to mitigate this risk, the user can post his location at a later point of time post completion of the visit [ 122 ]. Users must upload their multimedia content online very carefully as it may contain sensitive metadata and it is recommended to switch geotagging to manual mode in all their mobile devices and accounts. Also suggested is the use of software that removes such metadata from the pictures before uploading.

Be selective with friend requests: it is seen that many users accept friend requests without analyzing the complete profile of the requester. People generally accept friend request based on mutual friends. If the requester has some mutual friends, then they accept it [ 123 ]. Sometimes attackers make their profile attractive deliberately or they may impersonate an account. So, if the person sending a friend request is unknown, one should ignore that friend request. It could be a fake account attempting to steal sensitive information.

Be careful about what you share: users should be careful about their posts as it may reveal their personal information and sometimes others also. Many organizations keep strict rules and regulations for sharing information and multimedia content. There are many reports of people getting fired from their job due to sharing information illegally. This situation can be avoided if employees are well informed about the protocols of the organization they are working in regarding pictures, videos, and messages that they post online. Sharing information illegitimately can harm an organization’s reputation in the market along with its data and intellectual property also.

Be aware of links and third-party applications: illegitimate users can get access to someone’s account and get sensitive information by sharing a malicious link. Nowadays shortened URLs are becoming very popular on various social media platforms. These shortened URLs may be obfuscated with malicious code or script. These scripts try to gather the personal and confidential information of a user which may breach the privacy of that user. Moreover, hackers may take advantage of vulnerabilities present in a third-party application that is integrated with many popular social networks [ 124 ]. An example of such a third-party application happens to be games that are playable on online social networks which ask for user’s public information to consume their services. This gathered information may be provided to outsiders or third-party interventions. To avoid this risk, user should be careful while installing third-party applications in their profile.

Install internet security software: some threats whose pattern is known may easily be detected through anti-viruses. Threats like cyber grooming, cyberbullying can be detected to some extent by using anti-virus software [ 125 ]. Many malicious links can be shared by our friends unknowingly which redirects the user to some phishing website. Anti-virus software should be kept updated regularly due to the presence of many viruses created by hackers on a daily basis. Some social networking sites also have their own security tools which can be used by users to protect themselves from cyber-attacks.

Platform-wise

For professional networks.

Professional networks are primarily used to create contacts and increase perceptibility to potential recruitment companies [ 126 ]. So, to be safe on professional networks, one should look for the details provided by other users before adding them to one’s contact list. Generally, an adversary does not provide many details about his career.

A user should check if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes in someone's profile because if someone is applying for some job, it should be very well written and should be free from any spelling or grammar mistakes [ 127 ]. It should contain good information about that person.

Checking for consistency in a person’s career can be a good practice if a user wants to be safe on a professional network. A profile which continually and definitely changes over a short span of time is the most used part as a draw by the invader. At the point when the fraudster needs to target one sort of organization or vertical, he simply adds a new position that could be pertinent to his targets.

One should also cross-check information. If a person claims to be from the employer’s company, the user can check the company’s directory and should not hesitate to verify from his company’s human resource department.

For multimedia sharing platform

One should not post sensitive information in their photos or caption [ 3 ]. Exposing too much private information in a profile can be dangerous.

Sharing current locations on social media should be avoided. Geotagging services provided by different multimedia platforms should be turned off manually. There have been plenty of cases of thieves that were tipped off to rob homes. Suspects use social media to gather information about victims who share their location online. People who leave for a short holiday and brag about it online may come home to find the place emptied.

If an application is not in use for a long period, it is better to revoke access to that application. There are so many third-party applications which use social media account to log-in. For security and privacy concerns, one should allow access to applications that are trustworthy [ 4 ].

Enable two-step authentication for all your social media accounts wherever possible. This provides an extra layer of security to the account. In case an adversary finds out the password of a user, he will still need a second factor to authenticate himself. The second factor consists of a unique, time-sensitive code that users receive via text on their mobile phone.

For social connection platform

Users should learn about the privacy and security setting for different social media platforms and use them [ 128 ]. Each platform has its own privacy and security setting. Every platform provides settings, configuration, and privacy sections to limit who and what groups can see various aspects of the user’s profile. The privacy setting provided by the sites as default should not be adopted as it is.

The more details provided, the easier it is for an adversary to use that information to steal identity or to commit other cybercrimes. Thus, information sharing should be limited.

Before accepting a friend request, one should completely check the profile of the requester. One can make different groups for sharing different kinds of information like a different group for colleagues and family.

Before posting any information on the profile, employees should know their company’s policy over sharing any content online on social networks.

For discussion forums

One should pay attention while clicking on links given by various authors. It may be some suspicious site trying to get the credentials of the user.

Users should always keep an eye on the site’s URL. Noxious sites may look compellingly indistinguishable from a real one, however, the URL may contain slight inconsistencies like the variety in spelling or an alternate domain (e.g., .com versus.net) [ 129 ].

Be careful about communications that requests the client to act promptly, offers something that sounds unrealistic or requests personal information.

Open research issues and challenges

Scientists and researchers have found many methods and solutions to secure users on social media but there are still some issues which are not resolved. In this section, we discuss some of those issues and challenges.

Unfortunately, social networking sites are the easiest way for an attacker to lie about his identity and target the victim. They can lie about their age, looks, and can project themselves as a completely different identity according to their target. Child predators are taking advantage of this drawback in social networking sites, as children are a very easy target on these social platforms. These platforms have millions of users and monitoring each user can be very difficult. Therefore, there is a need for some system which can detect child predators effectively. Although the research community is trying to solve this issue, we need a good and effective system which can stop cyber grooming more efficiently. One possible addition to the already existing systems would be to incorporate artificial intelligence. The chat system can be improved to analyze conversations and derive meaningful inferences to support decision-making.

Social networking sites make money by allowing other companies to show advertisements on their website. Every time a user clicks an advertisement, it takes the user to a page where the user can buy a product and the social networking site get a percentage of that sale. These sites collect data of the users each time they use them so that they can show the advertisements as per the user’s interest. In this way, these social networking sites are collecting a huge amount of personal data of the user which can be sold to hundreds of businesses without user's knowledge. Hence, the user’s personal data is at risk. One possible way to thwart such data leaks is to inform the user of the data being shared. This would involve non-technical aspects to enforce a law or contract that all advertisements should abide by. From a technical standpoint there is not much control as to what the parent site decides to share with the advertising agency. Client-side browser restrictions could also provide wrapper-level security.

Nowadays surveys and games are becoming very popular on social media [ 130 ]. Generally, these surveys involve entering credentials which are supposed to enable the data for the survey to be gathered or the results to be shared. And while these surveys are collecting credentials, adversaries can skim those details to compromise user’s account.

Due to character count limitations on Twitter, people use shortened URLs to share their multimedia content. Adversaries can easily obfuscate malicious sites on these shortened URLs. This is an alarming situation since other social media applications like WhatsApp also have users who have started sharing shortened URLs. However, some social networking sites are working on this issue and have given solutions, but it is as yet conceivable that URL redirection can be used to hop from a safe landing point to a risky landing point. Again, a central repository of phishing sites could be leveraged by the client browser to warn the user when landing on the suspicious website. Further research could be conducted towards preemptive solutions that can parse URLs and warn the user even before clicking. A system is needed which can detect the malicious site from the shortened URLs effectively leveraging the already existing solutions.

Business-oriented networks contain significant business data that can be utilized to perform social engineering attacks. Some LinkedIn invitation update messages have been referred to be utilized as URL redirectors which can divert clients to some vindictive pages. This issue should be resolved so that users can be protected from a targeted attack. Here, intelligent language parsers could be trained to detect sensitive information and warn the originator of the information. Content detection can be applied to such platforms to find malicious activity. It can detect the number of posts posted through a profile because generally, the adversary posts similar messages.

There is a need to secure users on discussion forums also. Users can be easily fooled on discussion forums through phishing attacks which could result in deteriorating user trust on these forums. URL detection and filtering can be applied for these forums also to protect a user from malicious activity. Although such scenarios usually inform the user that they are moving out of the parent domain. The cost to reward ratio here is poor for any forum to implement parsers to parse external links. An incentive-based solution can be thought of to reward sites that scan external links.

Online social networks have become a vital part of the vast internet penetrated world. The paradigm shift has enabled social networks to engage with users on a daily basis. The increased rate of social media usage has solicited the need to make its users aware of the pitfalls, threats, attacks, and privacy issues in them. With the advancement in technology, social media has taken various forms. Individuals can connect to each other in a myriad of ways. Through professional sites, discussion forums, multimedia sharing networks, and many more, netizens can find themselves at the pinnacle of connectivity. Unfortunately, lack of awareness among users regarding security and privacy has the potential to lead to various cyber-attacks through social media. Although academia has come up with innovative solutions to address the security measures that are concerned with social media security, they suffer from a lack of real-world implementation and feasibility. Thus, there is a compelling need to continuously and iteratively review security issues in social networks keeping in pace with technological advancement. In this paper, we presented different scenarios related to online social network threats and their solutions using different models, frameworks, and encryption techniques that protect the social network users against various attacks. We have outlined different solutions and comparative analysis of different survey for better clarity about our survey. However, many of these privacy issues are not yet resolved. In addition to the defensive solutions, parents must monitor the kids actively when they are using internet services like OSNs. Overall, researchers can play a significant role in the defensive approach against these attacks in OSNs but still, some issues need to be resolved by using some hybrid approach, framework, and threat detection tools.

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Jain, A.K., Sahoo, S.R. & Kaubiyal, J. Online social networks security and privacy: comprehensive review and analysis. Complex Intell. Syst. 7 , 2157–2177 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40747-021-00409-7

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The Pros and Cons of Social Media

A look at the ups and downs of being so digitally connected to people

• University of Ontario
• George Brown College

• Southern New Hampshire University
• Online Dating

Social networking has changed the way we communicate, do business, get our daily news fix and so much more. But is it really all it's cracked up to be?

That depends on who you talk to and how you're using it. A site like Facebook could serve as an opportunistic launching pad for a new business owner, or it could be an inescapable source of negative peer pressure for a young teen. There are pros and cons to everything in life—and that includes our social networking habits.

The Pros of Social Networking

There are a lot of upsides to social networking. Ask yourself how you can take more advantage of the following whenever you decide to check out your favorite social networks.

Connect to Other People All Over the World

  One of the most obvious pros of using social networks is the ability to instantly reach people from anywhere. Use Facebook to stay in touch with your old high school friends who've relocated all over the country, use Google Meet to connect with relatives who live halfway around the world, or meet brand new people on social media from cities or regions you've never even heard of before.

Easy and Instant Communication

Now that we're connected wherever we go, we don't have to rely on our landlines, answering machines or snail mail to contact somebody. We can simply open up our laptops or pick up our smartphones and immediately start communicating with anyone on social media or one of the many social messaging apps available.

Real-Time News and Information Discovery

Gone are the days of waiting around for the six o'clock news to come on TV or for the delivery boy to bring the newspaper in the morning. If you want to know what's going on in the world, all you need to do is jump on social media. An added bonus is that you can customize your news and information discovery experiences by choosing to follow exactly what you want.

Great Opportunities for Business Owners

Business owners and other types of professional organizations can connect with current customers, sell their products and expand their reach using social media. There are actually lots of entrepreneurs and businesses out there that thrive almost entirely on social networks and wouldn't even be able to operate without it.

General Fun and Enjoyment

You have to admit that social networking is just plain fun sometimes. A lot of people turn to it when they catch a break at work or just want to relax at home. Since people are naturally social creatures, it's often quite satisfying to see comments and likes show up on our own posts, and it's convenient to be able to see exactly what our friends are up to without having to ask them directly.

The Cons of Social Networking

It's no secret that there's also a dark side to social networking. You may want to ask yourself how you can minimize the following cons of social networking as much and as often as possible.

If social media is your primary source for news and other information, you could end up in a filter bubble, which is when you've isolated yourself from new information and engaging with people who have different perspectives. If you've managed to stay in a bubble of harmful misinformation, it can damage relationships and even be dangerous.

Information Overload and Overwhelm

With so many people now on social media tweeting links and posting selfies and sharing YouTube videos, it sure can get pretty noisy. Becoming overwhelmed by too many Facebook friends to keep up with or too many Instagram photos to browse through isn't all that uncommon. Over time, we tend to rack up a lot of friends and followers, and that can lead to lots of bloated news feeds with too much content we're not all that interested in.

Privacy Issues

So much is shared online these days that issues over privacy are becoming an increasingly big concern. Whether it's a question of social sites owning your content after it's posted, becoming a target after sharing your location online , or even getting in trouble at work after tweeting something inappropriate — sharing too much with the public can open up all sorts of problems that sometimes can't ever be undone.

Social Peer Pressure and Cyber Bullying

For people struggling to fit in with their peers — especially teens and young adults — the pressure to do certain things or act a certain way can be even worse on social media than it is at school or any other offline setting. In some extreme cases, the overwhelming pressure to fit in with everyone posting on social media or becoming the target of a cyberbullying attack can lead to serious stress, anxiety and even depression.

Increased Feelings of Social Isolation

  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.

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.

Sedentary Lifestyle Habits and Sleep Disruption 

Lastly, since social networking is all done on some sort of computer or mobile device, it can sometimes promote too much sitting down in one spot for too long. Likewise, staring into the artificial light from a computer or phone screen at night can negatively affect your ability to get a proper night's sleep.

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How to Make Friends On the Internet

• Sulagna Misra

Some of the greatest friendships have started with a retweet.

The internet is deeply interwoven into our everyday lives. More and more people are using social media to share their work, explore the work of others, and even make meaningful friendships. Here are some dos and don’ts for (safely) making friends online:

• Do: Choose the platforms and communities that you care about. Don’t: Be everywhere.
• Do: Be kind and compassionate. Don’t be super honest (like in a mean way).
• Do: Connect with people you like. Don’t: Connect with everyone — especially the haters.
• Do: Build on connections that bring out your best. Don’t: Engage with people who bring out your worst.
• Do: Be open to making plans to hangout online or in-person. Don’t: Think that because this is someone you met online, the friendship isn’t important.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Have you ever made a friend online?

• SM Sulagna Misra is a freelance writer who has written for  Vanity Fair, Elle, GQ, Nylon, The Toast, New York Magazine,  and  many more publications . She has worked for companies such as GoFundMe and Netflix, among others. You can follow her on Twitter @sulagnamisra .

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Online Social Networks and Deontology Essay

When talking about the social networking and the ethical issues concerning the business element in the given sphere, it is most appropriate to consider the existing controversies from the point of deontology, since the latter, according to the definition provided by Brooks & Dunn (2009), “Deontology is different from consequentialism in that deontologists focus on the obligations or duties motivating a decision or actions rather than on the consequences of the actions” (184).

In the case study entitled “Case six. One more look at social networking” and conducted to figure out the probable ethical dilemmas existing in the social networking at present, important remarks concerning the business development in the sphere of social networks have been made.

According to the research, “Social networking web sites have had negative publicity in recent years, due to them being targeted by pornography and predators” (Case six. One more look at social networking, 2006).

In the given case, students split in two teams to engage in fundraising; one of the teams makes use of social networks, while another one resorts to school advertisements, banners, etc. As a result the former team wins, which shows the promotion effect which social networks have.

Thus, an ethical concern appears and the question is raised, whether it is ethical to use commercial sin social networks. Because of the active business development and the commercialization of the social networks, the impact which the latter leaves on the users leaves much to be desired.

The given issue causes for a more detailed consideration of the Australian Computer Society code of ethics and an even more thorough check of whether the current state of affairs can be considered as a deviation from the existing norms.

However, considering the Australian Computer Society Code of Ethics, one can hardly find the statement which can terminally ban the undesirable commercials from the users to observe on the site.

Despite the fact that certain statements can be vaguely related to as the ones that speak against the display of commercials with the inappropriate materials, the situation can be hardly addressed to as a completely clear-cut case.

On the one hand, there are such statements as “3.1. I will not knowingly mislead a client or potential client as to the suitability of a product or service” (Australian Computer Society, 1997) and “4.1.

I will protect and promote the health and safety of those affected by my work” (Australian Computer Society, 1997), which can supposedly be applied to, since the inappropriate information in the commercials can be classified as misleading and harmful for one’s psychological safety.

Nevertheless, the connection between the statements and the claims seems rather vague, which gives the reasons for concern.

Hence, the postulates of deontology should be applied to maintain the balance between the business goals and the usability of the site, which will require a profound theoretical basis.

Since in the given case the customers’ interests and even well-being is involved, it is most reasonable to consider the Kantian ethics as one of the main and the most specific branches of deontology.

As Ward explains, there is a certain connection between the Kantian ethics and that one applied to the social networks. According to Ward (2010) explains, “The tradition of prioritising the analyses of obligation and duty rather than the good flowing from Kant is often called ‘deontological’” (63).

Analyzing the case study in question, one can see distinctly that in the given case, Kant’s principle of Categorical Imperative is neglected. To consider the Kantian principle closer, one must pay a special attention to the explanation provided by Brooks & Dunn (2009):

Kant’s principle indicates that there is a duty or imperative to: always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law. This means that ‘if you cannot will’ that everyone follows the same rule, your rule is not a moral one. (Brooks & Dunn, 2009, 184)

Considering the case study in question, one can observe that the prior Kantian principle is being neglected in the social networking system, since in the realm of online business, the authors of the numerous commercials create the advertisements which would rather not be seen on any site or any networking service.

As Case six. One more look at social networking (2006) puts it, the researchers are “a bit leery of the use of any social networks as a marketing and promotional tool, because of all the negative publicity some of the web sites have had in the past” (para.13).

After all, “MySpace and Facebook both have terms of use that talk about their noncommercial usage” (Waring & Buchanan, 2010, 20).

However, it must be admitted that, once the content of the advertisements becomes more or less appropriate for the users of all ages and confessions, it is possible that the business in the sphere of social network can exist without any further ethical controversies.

Thus, it can be considered that in the given case of concern for the ethical principles applied in the sphere of social networking and business and the way the given principles can be bent for the sake of economical and financial success, the deontological theory seems the most appropriate.

Rather than focusing in the probable negative results, it establishes the moral principles with the help of which any negative results can be prevented.

Reference List

Australian Computer Society (1997). Values and ideas subscribed to by society members . Web.

Brooks, L. J., & Dunn, P. (2009). Business and professional ethics for directors, executives and accountants . Stamford, CN: Cengage Learning.

Case six. One more look at social networking (2006). Web.

Ward, S. J. A. (2010). Media ethics beyond borders: A global perspective . New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Waring, R. L., & Buchanan, R. (2010). Social networking web sites: The legal and ethical aspects of pre-employment screening and employee surveillance. Journal of Human Resources Education, 4 (2), 14-23.

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IvyPanda. (2023, December 25). Online Social Networks and Deontology. https://ivypanda.com/essays/online-social-networks-and-deontology/

"Online Social Networks and Deontology." IvyPanda , 25 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/online-social-networks-and-deontology/.

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NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias

An essay from an editor at the broadcaster has generated a firestorm of criticism about the network on social media, especially among conservatives.

By Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Mr. Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of Covid-19 and the war in Gaza. He also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Mr. Berliner’s essay has ignited a firestorm of criticism of NPR on social media, especially among conservatives who have long accused the network of political bias in its reporting. Former President Donald J. Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to argue that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded, an argument he has made in the past.

NPR has forcefully pushed back on Mr. Berliner’s accusations and the criticism.

“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” Edith Chapin, the organization’s editor in chief, said in an email to staff on Tuesday. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.” Some other NPR journalists also criticized the essay publicly, including Eric Deggans, its TV critic, who faulted Mr. Berliner for not giving NPR an opportunity to comment on the piece.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay, saying he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years. He called NPR a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and superb storytelling.

“I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change, and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered,” Mr. Berliner said.

He said he had not been disciplined by managers, though he said he had received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. He said he didn’t run his remarks to The New York Times by network spokespeople.

When the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” convened on Wednesday afternoon for a long-scheduled meet-and-greet with the network’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher , conversation soon turned to Mr. Berliner’s essay, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. During the lunch, Ms. Chapin told the hosts that she didn’t want Mr. Berliner to become a “martyr,” the people said.

Mr. Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Mr. Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better.

On Wednesday, staff members from “Morning Edition” convened to discuss the fallout from Mr. Berliner’s essay. During the meeting, an NPR producer took issue with Mr. Berliner’s argument for why NPR’s listenership has fallen off, describing a variety of factors that have contributed to the change.

Mr. Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Mr. Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.

“The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Mr. Cavin said.

Some journalists have defended Mr. Berliner’s essay. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsman, said Mr. Berliner was “not wrong” on social media. Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Mr. Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.

Mr. Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Mr. Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.

“We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Mr. Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by The Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion. And in a statement on Thursday, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association said it is a professional association for journalists, not a political advocacy group.

Mr. Berliner’s public criticism has highlighted broader concerns within NPR about the public broadcaster’s mission amid continued financial struggles. Last year, NPR cut 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts, including the popular “Invisibilia,” as it tried to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall. Listeners have drifted away from traditional radio to podcasts, and the advertising market has been unsteady.

In his essay, Mr. Berliner laid some of the blame at the feet of NPR’s former chief executive, John Lansing, who said he was retiring at the end of last year after four years in the role. He was replaced by Ms. Maher, who started on March 25.

During a meeting with employees in her first week, Ms. Maher was asked what she thought about decisions to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair whose position as a political analyst at NBC News became untenable after an on-air revolt from hosts who criticized her efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“I think that this conversation has been one that does not have an easy answer,” Ms. Maher responded.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact Ben securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or email at [email protected] . More about Benjamin Mullin

Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email:  [email protected]   More about Katie Robertson

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Npr editor says network ‘turned a blind eye’ to hunter biden laptop story because ‘it could help trump’.

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A veteran National Public Radio journalist slammed the left-leaning broadcaster for ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal because it could have helped Donald Trump get re-elected.

Uri Berliner, an award-winning business editor and reporter at NPR, penned a lengthy essay in Bari Weiss’ online news site The Free Press in which he called out his bosses for turning the public radio broadcaster into “an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience.”

“The laptop was newsworthy,” Berliner wrote. “But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched.”

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, The Post was the first to reveal the existence of the laptop that Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer shop.

The Post published the contents of emails taken from the laptop, which shed light on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president during the Obama administration.

Initially, national security experts and former intelligence officials declared the laptop a hoax and was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Social media sites like Twitter even barred its users from sharing links to The Post’s reporting.

The authenticity of the emails were later confirmed by independent experts and federal law enforcement officials .

According to Berliner, NPR’s managing editor for news at the time said that the outlet had no interest in “[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”‘[wast[ing] our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

Berliner wrote in The Free Press that a well-respected colleague at NPR said they were glad the network wasn’t covering the story because it would help Trump win re-election. He did not name the journalist.

After the contents of the laptop proved to be authentic, NPR “could have fessed up to our misjudgment,” Berliner wrote.

“But, like Russia collusion [allegations against Trump that were debunked], we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.”

NPR’s Edith Chapin, the acting Chief Content Officer, defended the organization in a memo to staff.

“I and my colleagues on the leadership team strongly disagree with Uri’s assessment of the quality of our journalism and the integrity of our newsroom processes,” she said.

“With all this said, none of our work is above scrutiny or critique.”

Berliner also took NPR to task for its coverage of the Russia collusion saga — which was fueled by allegations that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He said that NPR “hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist” — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Charges against Hunter Biden

COUNT 1: False Statement in Purchase of a Firearm

Faces a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment; a fine of $250,000; 3 years of supervised release; a special assessment of $100.

COUNT 2: False Statement Related to Information Required to be Kept by Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer

Faces a maximum of 5 years’ imprisonment; a fine of $250,000; 3 years of supervised release; a special assessment of $100.

COURT 3: Possession of a Firearm by a Person who is an Unlawful User of or Addicted to a Controlled Substance

“By my count, NRP hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia,” according to Berliner, who said he “eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.”

When Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, found no credible evidence to support the charge, “NPR’s coverage was notably sparse,” Berliner wrote.

“It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story,” Berliner wrote, adding: “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection.”

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Berliner also called out NPR for pushing other left-leaning causes, such as subjecting staffers to “unconscious bias training sessions” in the wake of the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

Employees were ordered to “start talking about race,” he said.

NPR journalists were also told to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” that were based on racial and ethnic identity, including “Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color” (MGIPOC); “NPR Noir” (black employees at NPR); and “Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media.”

According to Berliner, if an NPR journalist’s language “differs from the diktats of those groups,” then a “DEI Accountability Committee” would settle the dispute.

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