Blog Social Networking

Ah, social networking- where everyone is friends with everyone, despite where they live. Whether they've known the person they added for years or they're a mutual friend you've never met, the entire world is connected through social media. There are upsides and downsides to social networking. In NPR's article, "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," Langfitt explains how the professional networking site, LinkedIn, has become a huge help in the process of recruiting as well as for users to find a job. Users are able to market themselves and list their background and previous job experiences when job hunting. LinkedIn also allows users to simply look up the professional contacts people have connected with to find someone of their interest to reach out to, as opposed to manually calling or emailing people for someone else's contact information. Privacy can also be adjusted by the user, like any other social networking site. For example, one is able to decide how much of their profile they'd like for the public or their network to view.

There are many downsides to social networking and privacy plays a significant role. In The Atlantic's article "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private," Greenfield explains the extent of a simple post on social media and the scare it may cause. In the article, Zuckerberg's sister posts a photo to Facebook that depicts the family's holiday. However, the photo was leaked to Twitter due to the host of the post being a mutual friend to Zuckerberg's sister, giving her the ability to view a photo since her friend was tagged in it. In this situation, Zuckerberg's sister was uncomfortable about the leaked photo and eventually asked the host of the tweet to delete it. To further add on to the downsides of social networking technologies, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about university campuses creating campus gossip sites to speak poorly about students on the campus. Examples include JuicyCampus, CollegeACB, and Peoples Dirt. A question was posed in the article stating if colleges are required to act. In my opinion, I do believe colleges should take action. Students gossiping about other students may hurt feelings and cause people to become depressed or suicidal. It's the school's responsibility to exercise respect, especially to students towards one another.

To conclude, there are positives and negatives to social networking. Social networking can help one extend their professional network and find a job and connect with other professionals, or it can detriment one's privacy and emotions that may lead to more serious consequences (the "dark side"). The evolution of these technologies would probably improve on its privacy boundaries and monitoring what's being posted to the internet. Anything can easily be accessed with the simple click of a button and for that, we must be cautious.

Sources:
1) Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting
2) Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private
3) They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus Gossip Web Sites