Using examples, write an essay (350- 400 words) to support a generalization on social network sites, a generalization such as SNS are structured as personal (or “egocentric”) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community

Using examples, write an essay (350- 400 words) to support a generalization on social network sites, a generalization such as SNS are structured as personal (or “egocentric”) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community.

Social Networking Sites are very popular in today’s society, and they are used for many different reasons. People use social networking sites for keeping in contact with family and friends, sharing online photo albums, and keeping up with the current events and news. More recently, these sites have been used for expanding and facilitating business. There is a huge generalization that only teens use social media however that is not the case.

As stated, these sites are becoming increasingly used as websites to facilitate business. Although there are many teens who have high business aspirations, most of the business social network websites are used by adults. The social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great for business because it allows companies to pool together many of their target customers. There are millions of people using these platforms and if businesses do not use social networking sites they will miss out on a huge number of consumers.

Another reason why it is a generalization that social networking sites are only used by teens is through simple statistics. The average age of Twitter users is 32 (Gentle, 2009) which shows that obviously at least this platform is not mostly used by younger people. This reason kind of supplements the previous support, and could suggest that these older people are engaging in more business, and marketing.

Lastly, I believe that the ages of users are very dispersed but many older people are using the sites to reconnect with old friends, not to find new friends. When most adults were a child they did not have the social networking sites and lost contact with many of their close, and dear, friends. Now that the technology exists, the older generations are starting to use the social networking sites to try and find the old friends they lost contact with.

In conclusion, there may be many teens who are always using social networking sites, but there are also many older people who use these sites. These sites have great uses that may only appeal to older people, such as reconnecting with long-lost friends, marketing a business, or more. There are statistics to support that in fact the average age of twitter users are in fact adults. However, the generalization that only teens use social networking sites are close-minded, and simply wrong.

References

Gentle, A. (2009, April 06). Social networking and generalizations. Retrieved December 29, 2016, from https://justwriteclick.com/2009/04/06/social-networking-and-generalizations/