Boundary of Sharing Information?

As Social network sites have become a powerful tool for personal marketing field today, more and more people are willing to share personal profile and private information on the internet. Simply surfing on the internet, you can find lots of articles with guideline to help people improve relationship by social networking technology.

According to “Use Technology To Improve Your Relationships”, the author believed that using technology correctly will bring people closer and improve social relationship by following tips: using social networking sites, using photo and video sharing sites and blog also comments on other blog etc. In another article by Jenskie, “ Blogging: Your new cyber best friend”, the author believes that "one apparent cyber friend of many writers is blogging where they put across everything that they think and feel." At the beginning, what the bloggers put on their blogs may only present their daily life and personal experience, but soon they can start to write articles about anything such as Cosmetic, Construction and so on. The author also stated that "freedom to write about anything is overwhelming. In many ways or another, in various grounds, blogging defies and reflects boundaries." This concept also generally applies to posting on social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Nowadays we can see many people, especially young people, view their sapces on social network sites as private areas and take it for granted to share highly personal details.

However, it is also debated that people may suffer because of blurred boundary of sharing. According to The Independent News on Feb 08, 2009, “Facebook can ruin your life. And so can MySpace, Bebo….”, it is stated that "people should think twice about something they do every day - put highly personal information on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo - because anything posted on social network sites can be used to against themselves." There are many examples given to show why this issue is critical: 27 workers at the Automobile Club of Southern California were fired because of their coworker's messages their MySpace sites; the Florida sheriff's deputy had to hand in his badge because he revealed his heavy drinking and fascination with female breasts; Oxford students were disciplined were disciplined by University proctors disciplined students because of pictures of dousing each other in shaving foam, flour and silly string in post-exam revelry on their Facebook pages. Additionally, based on the report, "An American insurance company, in defending its refusal to pay out a claim, is seeking to call in evidence personal online postings, including the contents of any MySpace or Facebook pages the litigants may have, to see if their eating disorders might have "emotional causes"". All these information told us that what people imaged to be private websites now are practically monitored by employers and authorities. Although judge of the New Jersey insurance case haven't approved of using online posting outweigh privacy rights, it is believed to be a matter of time before such evidence is routine, especially we are well-awared that using social network sites to commit crimes are very common. This report has brought out a critical issue which go beyond our imagination when we make posting on those sites initially. The author also tried to warn the public by stating "If present trends continue and users fail to wise up, the sites could soon be bringing them some equally unexpected shocks."

By expressing ideas through social network sites, people not only can share different perspectives but also innovate new ideas. With a click on the mouse, people can get everything they want through free search engines. Using blogging enables people not only express their thoughts and emotions but also make money through delivering their masterpiece of perfessionalism on blogs. It cannot be denied that the way of sharing information is changing our life style and brings us abundant and fluent circulation of knowledge as well. But all these benefits will be impaired if there’s no boundary of sharing. Of course I’m not talking about urging the social networking sites to form a tangible boundary. But it should be a clear boundary of sharing information embedded within every internet user’s mind and help him/her to make the right disclosure decision.