Social Net'g

Over the past decade or so, we as a society have come to develop quite the love-hate relationship with social networking. In an online forum, Freakonomics asked: Is MySpace Good for Society? One research team at Michigan University has tried to understand why we are so attracted to sites like Facebook and MySpace. The study found that engagement in such sites actually boosted students' social capital, or the benefits they received from their relationships with others. Students with higher social capital were also found to have made better use of "weak ties," or people who they may not be close with personally but who could provide them with useful information. Social networking has also revolutionized the way we approach the job market. In Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting Maureen Crawford-Hentz, a recruiter for a global lighting company said, "Social networking technology is the best thing to happen to recruiting--ever." Sites like LinkedIn connect over 8 million professionals, including executives of Fortune 500 companies and big recruiters. Not only is this a way for students and potential job seekers to put themselves out there, but it's a way for those hiring them to filter out potential candidates with the click of a button.

As for social networking's overall benefit to society, it's difficult to genuinely say there is an overall benefit. Sure, it's easier to contact friends, strike up conversations with new people, organize groups and quickly disperse information. However, there is a "dark side" to this growing attraction, which makes one question whether the benefits truly outweigh the costs.  For one, we begin to forego the true meaning of friendship. The word friend has come to be someone whose status appears on your newsfeed, rather than someone you share a meaningful bond with. Social networking can also be detrimental to social development, especially for teens and young adults. It becomes so easy to take on an alternate persona online that people begin to lose track of who they really are and get lost in a web of pretentious lies. In addition to causing people to withdraw from the real world, the ease of communicating online can also lead to the abuse of technology. There have been too many cases linked to teen suicides resulting from bullying and gossip spread through social networking sites. Social networking is a tool that is simply too easy to misuse. Many teens and young adults fail to understand the repercussions of what they post online and social networking is unforgiving. It makes it way too easy for people to know the very intimate details of each others lives. 

Now for the future. While I do believe that LinkedIn is a wonderful tool that will continue to grow and expand for at least a few more years, I'd have to agree with Rachel Karl--Facebook has reached it's peak and will only continue to decline. The future of social networking is "visual and mobile" (aka Instagram and Snapchat). Facebook is primarily text based and I don't believe it will be able to keep up with the way we are consuming information.