Debate Research - Critical Thinking

Motion: This house believes that social networking sites should be banned at workplace.

Affirmative

Introduction:

In the recent years, social networking sites (SNSs) have significantly spread among society, especially among young people. According to an article of Danah M. Boyd from university of California-Berkeley, there are hundreds of SNSs such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, etc… with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but others helps strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious or nationality-based identities. Sites also vary in the extent to which they incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, blogging and photo/video-sharing.

These SNSs have been changing the way people communicate with each other, the way they keep in touch with friends and family, the way people do businesses. The emergence of these social networking sites has an effect upon human beings’ life in both positive and negative way. And nowadays, this has become a controversial topic, whether SNSs are good for our society.

A- Definition:

Social network is a network of online community including friends, family, colleagues, business partners as well as other personal contact. And by social networking I mean the act to interact and make connection in order to keep in touch, expand one own relationship and social contacts for their own purposes via social network. As the definition from dictionary, social networking is the development of social and professional contacts; the sharing of information and services among people with a common interest.

So by social network sites I mean the websites that offer services for people to do social networking (allowing users to...