Blog 1 SOC49

Required Blog 1: Social Networking and Privacy

Your task for this assignment is to record your thoughts on the prevalence of social networking. How often do you use social networking sites/tools like Facebook, Twitter, or FourSquare? How much time to do you spend texting, tweeting, or checking status updates on your phone or computer? Do you think the cultural move toward social networking, constant access, and the loss of privacy it sometimes brings about is a positive/negative trend on the whole? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of this entanglement between our personal lives and technology?  Have you ever "over-shared" or texted, tweeted, or posted something you have regretted? Do you ever worry about your privacy when it comes to using these tools?

    The extreme prevalence of social networking is a phenomenon our culture, and my generation specifically, have seen grow exponentially in the past few years. I have had a Facebook account since sophomore year in high school, while prior to that, I had AIM (instant messaging) and a Web-shots account for my photos. I would say that I used social networking the most in the first two years I had Facebook, while my interest has drained extremely in the past few years. While the Facebook fad of posting photos, friend requests and invitations has diminished for myself, I was a definite part of it for years. The amount of stalker-like information you can find on different people and friends, the updates on relationships and who-knows-who along with the easy accessibility of Facebook aids in its fame and popularity. While I must admit I was a Facebook fanatic for a few years and spent hours on Facebook daily, currently, I use Facebook for quick messaging, staying in touch with friends from high school and recently for posting photographs for my family to see my study abroad trip. Texting has become a very quick and easy way to contact someone and email has only further aided in our fast paced culture. Personally, I have stuck to Facebook, email and texting as my social networks, while I can see the fad running wild with Twitter, FourSquare and many other networks.
    I think that the cultural move toward social networking, constant access and the loss of privacy brings both positive and negative trends on the whole. I find the ability to stay in contact with friends from high school or younger and the ease in communicating with someone at such a fast pace are beneficial. The ability for my parents to reconnect with friends from high school and my generations ability to stay in contact with old friends can be beneficial in many aspects. While we tend to not admit that we are all internet fanatics in some sense or another, our culture has become so technologically advanced in the past few years that we are almost completely reliant on internet use on a daily basis. However, there are also many negative aspects of social networking as well. It seems to me the obsession with posting, poking and commenting take away from the one-on-one personal relationships of the past. Even in comparing when I was a child growing up to the current generation of children growing up in a culture which is so overwhelmed with technology there is a large difference. Even though my generation has experienced extreme technological advances, the younger generations which enter our culture during a time where technology is flourishing seem to start using technology at a younger age. I wonder if the younger generations are using social networking for maintaining relationships or merely creating artificial ones. The social networking fad came about only in the past few years and allowed my generation and old generations to reconnect with old friends, but how will social networking effect those younger than myself? Facebook came out initially for college students, however, now anyone can get an account. While it may be beneficial for my parents generation, I do feel children (6-14 years old) will suffer more intellectually and socially from merely online interactions than generations than they would if social networking was subject to an older age group.
     Technology has become such an overwhelming force in our lives, it is hard to even imagine life without such websites and communication technologies. In terms of privacy, I find the amount of information social networks present and the terms and services agreed to, particularly in terms of Facebook, are incredibly frightening and misleading. The fact that our personal information is sold to companies for research and advertisement seems really ridiculous to me, and personally, I find it somewhat comical the extent to which companies will go to to target a certain age group. I see the ad’s on my Facebook and am always curious as to how they know what types of products to aim at my account, however, I never actually follow any of the ad’s or end up buying something from the ad’s on my page. I do understand that researchers would use such information for marketing, however, I wonder how beneficial such marketing actually is.