The 20th century is indeed man’s greatest time phase ever known, because of broad scale development in technology, lifestyle, science, arts, linguistics and archaeology. Also many catastrophic events like wars, natural calamities, and cybercrimes managed to slip in the meanwhile. But the late 20th century did bring a revolution in what we call mass communication, by the introduction of social networking. As we moved into the 21st century, it was not long before the giants like Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, BlogSpot, Quora had managed to toll millions of people as active and frequent users. It was a great revolution in lifestyle of people. Interconnectivity across the globe, at the click of a button. Internet had found a new meaning other than Google or Wikipedia. Social Networking was the new trend in town. Teenagers, especially, found social networking the best way to interact, create friends, hangouts and now we stand here, with more than 1.5 billion active users.

It's great to have friends but you have to admit that there are certain interests you or they have, which neither is not interested in. When this happens, it is time to expand our circle and that is just one of the advantages of social networking. Social networking enables people who share the same interests to hang out together and this simply means that you are able to make new friends. If for example you are interested in basketball, no one there will get tired of talking about the players or the game which occurred last night or several years ago. Since most social networking is done over the web, you get to meet individuals from other countries and learn about their culture. How many people do you know keep in touch with someone across the Atlantic or the Pacific? Given that you share something in common, you get to communicate with that person regularly that is very similar to hooking up with your friends after work or school.

Discoveries are never made for the purpose of chaos, but we never know when the table may turn around, similar with social networking. Social networking has been described as the contemporary way that people interact. While that may be true, an individual's social success in the virtual world doesn't appear to carry over into the real world, according to a new study. Previous studies on how the Internet affects relationships have produced mixed findings. Some research shows that lots of social networking activity has a negative effect on social life while others suggest it enhances one's social circle. As a parent you also wouldn’t like your child glued to his computer or mobile day in day out, intoxicated with social networking all over. Social networking sites are great for maintaining and renewing relationships. But Facebook and other sites can also lead to shattered relationships. According to a new study, the three most-common negative experiences are: Ignoring or denying "friend" requests, deleting public messages or identification tags, seeing a Top Friends list on which one doesn't appear or is ranked lower than expected.

The biggest con of social media is that security risks that come with it. In order to use a social media site you have to provide personal information otherwise none of your friends will be able to find you. The problem is that if you put personal information online there is a pretty good chance that it will fall into the hands of the wrong people. The biggest risk is of identity theft, if you are going to use social media you have to be very careful about what you put up on these sites.

Another issue that social media presents is issues with privacy. As much as you try to limit who sees your information the reality is that once it is online anybody can find it. One of the biggest issues that this has

caused is with employers going to social sites to see what their employees or the people they are considering hiring have put up. More than one person has lost their job because of something they have put on a social site. This creates a bit of a problem since you don't want to put anything potentially embarrassing online but that is just the sort of thing that you would want to share with your friends.

One last con of social media is that it tends to limit who you interact with. In theory it is supposed to expand your network of people that you socialize with but what actually happens is that people tend to form into groups who all share the same opinion. In most cases people with different beliefs are excluded. The result is that even though you may interact with thousands of people they are all people who share the same opinion. This tends to result in people becoming much less tolerant of differing beliefs from their own. As a result people are becoming much more rigid in what they believe.

So, now the question is, is social networking social at all? Think about it.

Technology is all about accepting it. It gives you power, but also the choice to put it in the right or wrong use. Social Networking is one of those powers, exploited by some teenagers to express personal emotions, while for elders, just a public forum to keep updated with others. Unfortunately, we cannot put checkmarks in people’s social life; help regulate their emotions on the social network, which often leads to controversies, ill-heartedness, and peer rivalry. It should be thus concluded; social networking does put people in contact with the globe but also traps them in addictiveness to expand.