SOCIAL NETWORKING

To most of us, social networking refers to a way to keep in touch with old friends and sometimes even make new ones. Social networking sites make it for us to search for the people who we want to contact or meet. There’s different uses for it such as friendship, romance, specific and shared interests such as arts and music, etc. However, others think that it also brings consequences to society. According to our assigned reading, Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum by Stephen J. Dubner. NYT Feb 15, 2008 http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/is-myspace-good-for-society-a-freakonomics-quorum/?emc=eta1 "Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. Also, if we go back to another reading, I can quote “William Reader, professor of psychology at Sheffield Hallam University and social networking site researcher: some doom-mongers have suggested that social networking technologies will eventually lead to a society in which we no longer engage in face-to-face contact with people. I don’t see it. Face-to-face contact is, I believe, very important for the formation of intimate relationships (and most of us crave those).”
In my opinion, social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,etc has a positive effect on society only if they are used properly and carefully. I believe that people shouldn’t meet people over the internet since we never know who’s behind the computer, and we would be taking a dangerous risk of having a “relationship” with a person who might not be good and in the long run it might bring problems. Personally, I only use these sites to keep in touch with old friends and maybe sometimes meet people who already know my friends rather than dealing with complete strangers. Finally, another “dark side” of social networking could be that it could bring sexual harassment and risk to lose our jobs due to inappropriate comments made on posted pictures or simply on a “Wall”. Therefore, we should all be careful about what is being said/posted on our profiles.