Online Social Networking
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In a previous time in American culture, social networking in real life included harnessing the people you knew and their resources to benefit in a variety of ways, from increased social activity to career advancement. As Hyatt (2008) notes, "Networking has clearly shown social as well as economic (jobs, contracts, sales, information, etc.) benefits in real life" (p. 2). In real life social networking, individuals typically know the people they know with little knowledge of whom their contacts know. Known as "first-degree" contacts; the power of your network increases dramatically if you can "tap the network of your first-degree contacts" (Hyatt, 2008, p. 1). In this real life networking environment, one of the main challenges was keeping track of the contacts of others on top of managing our own contacts. Over the past decade there has been a proliferation of what are known as online social networks (OSNs), like Second Life.com, MySpace.com, and FaceBook.com, sometimes referred to as "social networking services (SNSs)" (Young, 2007, p. 1). Online social networks remove the traditional challenge to real life social networking; because they help individuals track the relationships of first-degree contacts. Andrew Weinreich, founder of Friendster, an OSN, explains this newfound capability: "You are no more than two degrees from anyone you want to meet. The problem is finding the right two people. The reason for an infrastructure that def
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d a comprehensive survey on users of MySpace and Facebook, concluding that "Broad claims of victimization risk, at least defined as unwanted sexual solicitation or harassment, association with [OSNs] do not seem justified" (p. 350). Unlike OSNs real life social networking does not provide such immediate and widespread access to members' personal information.
Another potential concern posed by OSNs is that it will isolate users and seclude them from others. Today, many individuals meet their friends online before ever meeting them face-to-face, if they meet them face-to-face at all. Likewise, there is a greater potential to judge others on OSNs in ways that promote exclusion. Nicole Ellison, professor of telecommunications, explains that this could have a negative impact if users "choose potential friends via their Facebook profiles, meaning that folks cut themselves off from serendipitous encounters with those who are superficially distant from them, ethnically, socio-economically, and even in terms of musical taste" (Dubner, 2008, p. 3). An increased sense of isolation is also emerging because of reliance on OSNs over real life social networking. When our computers crash, Dubner (2008) maintains that the fact that
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University Chicago, Lenhart Madden, Wide Web, Individuals OSNs, Friendster OSN, Hempel Lehman, OSNs Dubner, Da Costa, , MySpace Life, real life, social networking, social networks, life social, real life social, 20 2008, retrieved 20, retrieved 20 2008, life social networks, barnes 2008, life social networking, online social, dubner 2008, online social networks, first-degree contacts,
Approximate Word count = 3757
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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