Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Do Social Networking Sites Work?
So I was reading the article on CNet (http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6240543-1.html) about whether or not social networking sites really work, and it made me think about my own experiences with them. I have never used sites such as MySpace or any of the other popular sites. I am however a member of Facebook. I never really had an initial interest in joining such a site, but there seemed to be so much buzz about it beginning senior year of high school that it seemed strange to not even check it out. I wanted to fight the mainstream culture and not give in by joining. That lasted until about halfway through my first semester as a freshmen in college. Everyone went on and on about how wonderful Facebook was that I just had to join to see if it was all true. Since I joined, I have been disappointed with the website. While it does encompass many interesting features, I think it changes the social dynamic of campuses and now society. More and more of these Internet based programs, beginning with email and instant messaging and now social networking sites are eliminating the need for people to have any human interaction. While this may seem very "cool," I don't think it is taking us down a good road. Do you think that the decreased amount of interaction between people as a result of new technologies is a positive or negative thing? Further, do you even think that technology has had this affect?
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Before I answer your questions, I want to ask you about this. Do you think new technologies decreased amount of interaction between people? I wonder we can think about it more. It is true that now people spend less time to meet people offline because they have new technologies, such as SNS, mobile phones, IMs, Emails, and so on. However, in my opinion, the amount of interaction between people hasn’t changed yet. I mean, the amount of time people spend together OFFLINE may have been decreased, but the amount of time people spend together ONLINE may have been increased. So I think it’s a matter of balance.
I think technology has definitely affected society and human face-to-face interaction. However, it has provided us the opportunity to share other things that just words. Social networking sites enable users to share interests, groups, friends (from home or school), pictures, notes, videos, memories etc. Instant message and social networking sites have changed what I feel are initial interactions. However, I don't think that Facebook is going to prevent somebody from sitting down to coffee or anywhere near the extent of preventing people from dating anywhere but online. It just gives more opportunity to reach other users and connect with them in ways that weren't before possible.
I don't think that websites such as Facebook will take us down that road at all. Mainly because Facebook and other social networking sites are largely dependent on social interaction. If kids weren't getting together to hang out and do crazy stuff, we would not see all of the crazy pictures on Facebook which, I believe, are one of the main drawing points to this website.
Furthermore, I don't think products like instant messengers will take us down this road either. I would say that the larger majority of the people I know use instant messengers for two main purposes 1) to get themselves through the terribly boring classes that we are sometimes forced to sit through and 2) a convenient way to contact a friend to make plans with them.
I know I personally hate to use the phone and, rather than running up my text bill, it's sometimes much easier to just shoot someone an IM to see what kind of beer we're gonna drink that night hahaha
I agrees to a point that the way our interaction has changed in terms. I mean face to face interaction has decreased. It will cause a problem when people have it such as business place because there is strict propiety. In virtual world, everything tends to be casual everyone is opener there. I am still thinking face-to-face interaction must be very importrant for many things to establish solid trusts with many people.
I think that the decreased amount of interaction between people due to the increased amount of technology is a negative thing. As RASCHICAGO mentioned it has decreased the actual social interaction. Someone asked me the other day why I text message so much and don’t talk on the phone and the answer is – its easier. You don’t have to bother people and they can respond on their own time. All of these things are negatives though as we will see younger generations will have less people skills when they grow up.
I think that technology has a big part in this because it has shown the fact that you can hide behind text messaging and other instant messaging devices. Facebook allows people to leave messages on each other’s walls as opposed to picking up the phone. All of these things point to the issues that we are having with decreased personal interaction.
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