Difference between revisions of "Social Networking"

Revision as of 15:44, 7 October 2011

Social networking services are tools used for communication, collaboration, and sharing thoughts of individuals amongst friends. Popularity in these services continues to grow today, especially in younger generations as well as college students. People can post a large amount of information including personal information, images, music, and thoughts. Issues of privacy tend to be the main point of debate against these types of services, since online identity can be extremely hard to distinguish. Moral issues are also discussed because the services are popular for expressing personal emotions and feeling across a variety of topics.

Background

Social networking services started in the late 1990s, with a limited number of users. The types of information that could be displayed were small, and most of the services were closed off to a certain demographic of people. Most users were considered early adopters to technology.

History

The first reported social networking service was SixDegrees.com. This site allowed users to create profiles, add friends by common interests/groups, and browse through those lists. Many other sites began to pop-up, the next big ones to be Friendster in 2002 and then MySpace in 2003. The biggest leap started with Facebook in 2004, which then expanded to include high students the following year, and then everyone in 2006. Facebook then began its domination in social networking service users year after year. Even though some of the earlier sites lost users because of new innovations, the general theme of the services remained the same. Each site allows a user to form a profile, with whatever amount of information they wish, and then to connect with other friends and family members to share thoughts, stories, or any other interests.

Today

Social networking services have become synonymous with everyday life. The sites are popular for sharing images, stories, and other friendly information across groups of friends. They are also useful for staying in touch with friends and family who may live in another state or attend another school. Daily news and current events are frequently posted about as well as localized events. Facebook, the largest of these networks, claims to have over 800 million active users, with 50% of these users logging in daily. Controversy surrounds the site, as far as privacy issues and other psychological issues that may result from use of social networking services.

Privacy

As with any large network of people on the web, social networking services find their privacy policies under attack on a daily basis. Some people believe that too much information is available and that information should be private unless otherwise selected. Opponents say that individual persons are responsible for every piece of information they post, and that if they disagree with the policies, they should stay away from the site.

Ethical Issues

Along the lines of privacy issues follows ethical implications about social networking services. Individual rights issues as far as what content is viewable and by who is difficult for individuals to control. Our idea of what is right to share and who to share it with becomes hazy in an online, social environment. Issues such as cyber-bullying, online stalking, and other malicious behavior is hard to facilitate within social networking services, as it is easy for a user to create a false profile. There is not confirmation of identity, unless there is a connection in the real world. Ethics surrounding the common good of all people is also an issue. Some user might join the site to create a group and connect to people for good causes, such as cancer awareness or to promote good qualities. It would be just as easy for a user to create a group for such bad actions as well. Questions of honesty and accountability are present in these services as well. Since little is needed to confirm the accuracy on a user's profile, a person can get away with saying anything about themselves in order to connect to the right people.

Future

The future of social networking services remains to be unknown, but new innovations are being created on a daily basis as far as how big the social networks can get. Connecting to friends, employers, and family are good, but joining together for awareness on hot topic issues, put beside a page where friends can decide where they want to eat together just hints at the enormity the services can have. There will no doubt be more of these services created, especially to individualized interests, as people try to keep parts of their lives separate.

References

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

http://edu.udym.com/ethics-of-social-networking/

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/social-networking.html