Social Networking Paradox: How close is too far?
Three friends took a social networking quiz on a popular website to understand their relation better, after they got to read the results, they are not friends anymore. Peter named Amanda as his best friend, Amanda named Ronnie and Ronnie named a fourth person.
Peter: Amanda doesn’t treat me as her best friend; I do not like her anymore.
Amanda: Ronnie did not name me as his best friend; he is not my best friend anymore.
This small example explains the paradox of social networking. Social networks that could (and should) be used as tools to understand and facilitate the human interactions better, may also lead to situations uncalled for. Recently there was a news article stating that how 500 hooligans gate crashed a birthday party, which was advertised on face book profile, of a teenager in Hampshire. It took hours for more than 70 police officers to control the situation. It was certainly a party that went wrong due to the (in) famous out reach of Facebook.
I think that social networking is like nuclear technology, which when not used carefully, may lead to catastrophe. Social Networking, which surely has a lot of advantages, has also lead to some infamous incidents. Like every new technology, social networking sites also have their own share of infamy.
In one famous incident, Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs of the current Indian government, almost risked his ministerial position after an infamous tweet. In another, a 16 year old girl from
Source:
http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/5020004.cms
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/essex/7914415.stm
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html
Danah M boyd defines Social Networking websites as, “We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.”
Use of social networking websites, by HR managers, for checking the profile of prospective candidates is old now. All of us know that how the
However, along with the good aspects, social networking comes with its share of infamy and some little known paradoxes. The first and foremost step to resolve this paradox would be, to draw a line between social networking websites and social networking. Social networking is a lot more than just the websites. Websites like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut are just a part of the phenomenon called social networking. A narrow view of social networking and limiting it to websites it just illogical and uncalled for.
Privacy Paradox: There are several studies on the paradox associated with social networking websites. Categorically mentioned by Susan Barnes, “Teenagers will freely give up personal information to join social networks on the Internet. Afterwards, they are surprised when their parents read their journals”, explains how gullible a teenager could be, while using social networking websites.
Users often post their pictures posing in weird situations, for example underage users with alcohol or marijuana, and they are left flummoxed when authorities crack down on them using the photographs. On one hand, users are scared about their privacy being leaked to the open world; on the other hand vulnerable users will put all possible information about them on social networking websites to seek attention. Some teenagers and adults also, are under tremendous pressure to amass more online "friends" and fans. The goal is an ever-increasing girth of one's social network (Donath and Boyd, 2004). Users go to extents like posting weird stuffs and pictures, which they think will make them stand apart from the millions flocking the social networking websites. And like any broadcast, when such information reaches the audience that is not intended to receive the information, results may be uncalled for. Danah M Boyd also states in her research paper, “Taken out of context”, that how teenagers are under peer pressure to join a social network. How peer pressure leads them to participate in a never-ending war of increasing friends and followers.
When Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook users do no need to worry about their privacy on Facebook, I just find myself clueless about his intentions. It is so well known that Facebook provides user information to third party applications.
Let me share with you, a small but glaring part of “Terms of Service” of Facebook, which you automatically agree upon when you sign up for Facebook:
you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
When you add an application and use Platform, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy settings, but your agreement with that application will control how the application can use the content and information you share. (To learn more about Platform, read our About Platform page.)
Source:
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
So, you can see what kind of rights you give to Facebook, when you sign up.
Leave apart their intentional sharing of information, there are projects that reveal that ‘homosexuals’ can be identified on these social networking websites, even if they have not disclosed their sexual orientation.
Source:
Balachander Krishnamurthy of AT&T, in his famous study, concluded that leakage of private information to third party is happening and is rampant on these social networking websites. He explicitly states that “OSNs (Online Social Networks) in our study consistently demonstrate leakage of user identifier information to one or more third-parties via Request-URIs, Referer headers and cookies. In addition, two of the OSNs directly leak pieces of PII to third parties with one of the OSNs leaking zip code and email information about users that may not be even publicly available within the OSN itself.”
Source: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2009/workshops/wosn/papers/p7.pdf
One infamous case that makes most of us and not only us, but also the head of secret service agency MI6 vulnerable to information leak, made headlines in the world media. It happened when new head of secret agency MI6 found himself in midst of a severe security breach, when his wife published intimate photographs, address, details about holidays and family details on the Facebook website.
Source:
Internet is filled with stories when students from college were fired because of their Facebook profile.
Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2006-03-08-facebook-myspace_x.htm
When an employee was fired in
So, do we need a moral policing by authorities or introspection about this paradox of privacy over social networks?
Productivity Paradox: A lot of debate is going on banning social net working websites in organization. Some say that it helps them to concentrate after a small bout of socializing over the social networking websites. However, managers at most if the corporations do not agree with this argument. Increasingly, corporations around the world have started banning social networking websites.
Source:
Then people say quote studies that claim that social networking increases productivity by almost 40%. Then the workers associations stand up and demand for the access of social networking websites in work place.
Source:
http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/web/2009/hbr-list/how-social-networks-work-best
But, little do they realize that the study emphasizes on face to face networking, rather than social networking via websites, “Electronic tools may well be suited to information discovery, but face-to-face communication, an oft-neglected part of the management process, best supports”, is clearly stated in the finding of the above mentioned study. Now there is a thin line between the two aspects highlighted by the article and the worker’s demand, which is alarmingly getting blurred everyday. According to a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm, 54% of
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139020/Study_54_of_companies_ban_Facebook_Twitter_at_work
Leave apart empirical studies, I personally have noticed my self and other colleagues of mine who are glued to Facebook for hours scribbling on profiles’ walls, when we all should be interacting in real time with a real colleague sitting next to our table. It for sure decreases productivity, and it is evident when after reading a slide of Social Networking lecture, I pause – log on to Facebook and start reading messages and chatting for hours before realizing that I have wasted hours, which I should have spent on my Social Networking assignment. If you do not believe my personal opinion, fine. But you will have to pay some heed to what “Aryn Karpinski” of Ohio State University and her co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University have to say, “college students who use the 200 million–member social network have significantly lower grade-point averages (GPAs) than those who do not”. Now, I guess this study by these scholars will make you think about his aspect of social networking.
Source:
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1891111,00.html
Forget about other organizations. Even pentagon has imposed a blanket ban on social networking websites.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/washington/15block.html?_r=2
Even if you tend to overlook these studies, facts are something that can not be avoided. In my previous organization, a ban was imposed on all social networking websites after statistics showed that 70% of over bandwidth, and 45 % of the working time of the employees was consumed by websites such as Facebook, Orkut and YouTube.
Data security is one thing that is really important for most of the organizations in the globalize world. Free access of information may also lead to security breaches. A report by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm states that firms with an employee strength of 1000 plus employees are really apprehensive about the usage of social media by their employees for leaking secure information. In fact, 17 percent of corporations report having issues with employee’s use of social media. And, 8 percent of those companies report having actually dismissed someone for their behavior on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Source:
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/social-media-misuse/
I am sure you would not want to get fired because you have said something nasty about your boss on a social networking website. A girl was fired from a
Now, here we need to understand how and when information is to be provided and how close do we get to our virtual world and how far we get from the real world.
I have read a lot of blogs and articles stating how the
Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/political-aspirations-watch-facebook-president-obama/story?id=8555142
Facebook Paradox: I have personally noticed my cousins who used to be outgoing and excited about socializing with friends out in the evening, have now become Facebook addicts and spend hours glued to the screen of their computer. It makes me worried that a website that should be used for socializing is alienating my innocent cousins from real world. In fact, they prefer spending long hours with their computer instead of talking with family. Again, a line is to be drawn defining the usage of social networking tools, which may in fact facilitate increase in loneliness and depression.
Now I do not entirely agree with the definition of Facebook paradox, but I could notice a hint of it in behavior of my cousins. “The paradox can be explained by reasoning that somebody who is so active in Facebook must have a lack of real life social interactions to account for the time they can afford to spend on the Internet. On the converse, somebody with a very active social life does not typically worry about spending too much time on social networking sites (SNS), hence the lack of Facebook friends.”
When people advocate that social networking websites provide a platform for interacting for lonely and depressed people, they often overlook an implicit danger. A study by Yoshimitsu Takahashi states that “An SNS for people with depressive tendencies provides various opportunities to obtain support that meets users’ needs. To avoid a downward depressive spiral, we recommend that participants do not use SNSs when they feel that the SNS is not user-selectable, when they get egocentric comments, when friends have a negative assessment of the SNS, or when they have additional psychological burden.” Now this study clearly states that social networking may have benefits but it may also lead to dire consequences as self destructive tendencies. We all know about the in famous suicide case of Megan Meier.
Source:
http://www.jmir.org/2009/3/e29/HTML
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html
(Mis)Use of Social Networking Websites:
Social Networking for sure, provides a platform for like minded people to interact and participate in constructive discussions; however, it may also lead to victimization of innocents. There is a famous
Source:
One aspect that I am really worried about is the vulnerability of teenagers to get exploited on these social networks. I do care about increasing cohesiveness amongst people via these social networks but one death or one sexual abuse can not be compensated for any number of benefits of social networking websites.
We also know that how social networks have affected our daily lives. In fact a lot of people have found their friends, soul mates and dream jobs through these social networks. In fact there were certain charity events that used the strength of networking to achieve tremendous success for social causes. In such an event Twitter collected USD 250,000 (Twestival) for providing clean water to a population that is deprived of clean water. In another, a network raised enough money for a displaced woman.
Source:
http://mashable.com/2009/04/02/social-media-charity-events/
Social Networking is an art and a science when it comes to visualizing interactions between people. Social Networking is a tool with the immense potential to realize the objectives of increasing synergies and exploiting untapped potential of networks. However, we also need to draw a line between the scope of networking, how it should not be exploited by the people with ill intent.
In today’s world, learning about social networking is like learning about sex in
Now the onus is on to us, as how we can teach all these million kids out there and ourselves about the implications of social networking. What about introducing “Impacts of social networking” in course curriculum of schools and colleges.
Increased awareness is the only way by which we can tackle this enormous source of information that is enclosed in social networks. I would appreciate if Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert Murdoch, who are riding on the success wave of social networking, spend a couple of million dollars to spend on educating our younger generation and their parents. What about advertising and sponsoring such courses on their website. Social Networking is like a genie in the bottle that could build castles but could also destroy the world. Now we have to decide, what we want this genie to do for us. Education is definitely a tool that will help us tame this genie.
Being an ardent believer of social networking I would like this phenomenon to proliferate but with caution. While playing around with social network, I only wish that we do net get too close to our virtual connections, severing all our ties in the real world. It is a simple phenomenon that within a group more clustering will also lead to isolation from some one. Now we need to draw the line and decide, how close is too far.
Punit
M10
P.S. I wish your profile or picture never gets featured on this website.
Finally, some information that may help you secure your privacy over these social networks:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-complete-guide-to-facebook-privacy/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/167057/how_to_avoid_facebook_and_twitter_disasters.html
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/
And if you are looking for some statistics related to social networking, then work by
Jeremiah Owyang, is really helpful.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/01/11/a-collection-of-soical-network-stats-for-2009/
Disclaimer: Views of the researchers and people who have been quoted here do not necessarily reflect my views. I expressly disclaim any unwarranted interpretation of the article.
1 comment:
This is way too much for one post; your point gets lost in all the words, and I read it through twice. Yes, I know that you say that virtual connections shouldn't be everything and can't replace the close connections of personal friendships. But rather than fire a shotgun blast with dozens of links and references, better to make your point clear and concise, showing the reader how they should approach the subject by clearly describing your thinking and selecting a few, prioritized websites, especially helpful for those wishing to prepare for the debate. Also, many of the examples you used have been used by your colleagues in previous posts (I'll only mention Danah Boyd and Shashi Tharoor because I've met both of them.)
The downside of waiting until (almost) the last minute!
Post a Comment