Social Networking

Social networking involves Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networking sites where people come together to share news, information, status updates, or merely a passing thought they believed the internet might find amusing.

It can be used in wholesome ways and for incredible good – an elderly couple who no longer drive can keep up with their grandchildren three states away, your cat can become Insta-famous without your dog getting jealous of all the attention it’s getting, your mother can share recipes with her book club, and on and on the list goes.

However, social networking is often used for nefarious purposes. Campus gossip websites can become vessels for harassment and cyberbullying. (Young) Other people can stalk you in cyberspace, and future employers might be vacillating between you and an equally-qualified other candidate, but that other candidate gets the job just because you made the mistake of posting a questionable selfie back in your first year of college. Employers, your friends, and you family will all be able to track you on social media and make judgement calls about who you are, and what type of person you are becoming.

Some people feel forced to quit social media entirely, either because it has become an addiction in their lives, because of privacy concerns, or because they felt it distanced them from their friends despite marketing itself as a means of bringing people together. (Heffernan)

In short, society at large benefits from the profits and jobs created by social networking powerhouses, but individuals, by and large, suffer the consequences.

In the future, it is possible that social networking sites will become even more invasive. With more people spending more time on their screens, Facebook and other social networking sites have more time to monitor them and collect valuable data. We mustn’t forget that Facebook isn’t just a site – it’s also a corporation, with monetary interests at heart. The data it collects from its users is worth money, and in the end, we are just another set of data points to them. I don’t see a reversal of this trend anytime in the future, and indeed expect that the situation will only be exacerbated.

Heffernan, Virginia. “Facebook Exodus.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30FOB-medium-t.html?_r=2&ref=technology.

Young, Jeffrey R. “They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites.” Chronicle.com, Aug. 2009, www.chronicle.com/article/theyre-backtheyre-bad-/48220.