Social Networking

Social networking is a a means of communication and branching out. Corporate individuals and regular individuals use social networking everyday, whether its to make change the time of a meeting or whether its to wish somebody happy birthday. There are tons of social network websites, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin Twitter etc. and they can be used in many ways. For example, Facebook can be used by companies to create their own page that has information about the business, such as locations, contacts, what the company does and pictures. Linkedin is more of a professional means and can help connect people in the business world.

Social networking is very beneficial to society. It helps people stay connected with others without the use of a rolodex. It also helps recruiters help hire people more easily. ""I ended up looking for consumer product marketing," Crawford-Hentz says. "And I hit upon his profile, and I sent him this e-mail saying: 'Hi, Alfred, I found your profile on line. And we have a position that I think may be of interest to you.'"" (Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting) This is one way recruiters can look for people to hire, it is an instant access of people's resumes, ideas, and products. This can shorten the hiring process, and can make it easier for people looking for work as well, all they have to do is put themselves out on the web.

For every good thing there is a bad, and the same goes for social media. Social networking can lead to gossiping and spreading rumors about individuals, and this has lead to suicide of many teens. Many teens group up and can single people out, this can make individuals feel inferior, and instead of turning off the computer screen, they stay on because social media is their life, they have lost personal contact with people because cyber interaction is the new thing. Also, social media creates meaningless friends. People have friends on social media that they could have met only one time in their life, but since adding a friend is as easy as clicking a button and hitting "send request", it makes it that much easier for people to add them. 

Social media is growing everyday, from existing media sites expanding to other countries to new sites being created. It was only not too long ago where people where calling other people to talk to them, nowadays we can send them an instant message with equals the amount of time of the person to just dial the other person's phone number. Soon we will be living in a world where social media will be the only way to communicate, where we will be glued to our screens every moment of the day. A lot of this will be for the positives but there will be negatives as these technologies evolve.



Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum by Stephen J. Dubner. NYT Feb 15, 2008

Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt, NPR, March 16, 2008