Social Networking and Privacy

2. Social Networking and Privacy 

Your task for this assignment is to record your thoughts on the prevalence of social networking. How often do you use social networking sites/tools like Facebook, Twitter, or FourSquare? How much time to do you spend texting, tweeting, or checking status updates on your phone or computer?

Do you think the cultural move toward social networking, constant access, and the loss of privacy it sometimes brings about is a positive/negative trend on the whole? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of this entanglement between our personal lives and technology?  Have you ever "over-shared" or texted, tweeted, or posted something you have regretted? Do you ever worry about your privacy when it comes to using these tools?

The prevalence of social networking is everywhere. While I don’t use twitter or foursquare, It is still obvious that everyone around me is using them. Even people like politicians use twitter to promote candidates... that seems kinda ridiculous to me. I feel like I am actually a pretty moderate user of a lot of technologies. The technology that I use the most is my cell phone. I spend a lot of my time texting. I enjoy be able to talk to people all the time and it’s just so easy to text someone to tell them something fast or to plan to meet with someone. However, sometimes I feel like even texting and cell phones, as much as I rely on them, are way too prevalent. If you walk anywhere, just about every other person is on a cell phone, whether texting or talking. It kinda creeps me out. My phone compared to other’s phones is probably kinda old school. While I have a touch screen and everything, I don’t get email, GPS or any other updates on my phone besides texting and calling and just the basics. While some people wouldn’t be able to live without all that extra that stuff, I kinda like it. It splits up the amount of technology that I can have at one time, so that I’m not even more reliant on my phone.

I feel like as a whole, social networking is almost a negative thing. While I love being able to contact my friends and family a lot, I am worried about my privacy and if my employers will judge me on my information in my Facebook profile. I don’t put things on my Facebook that I’m not comfortable with everyone seeing, but still, I don’t like to worry that anyone can look and my profile and it’s kinda scary. Once your information is on the internet once, it’s there forever for anyone who cares enough to look for it, and that is a huge invasion of privacy that I don’t agree or feel safe with. I guess if I’m worried I could just not have a Facebook, but when everyone else has one and relies on it so much, it would be hard to be the one left out of it all. I don’t know, I just feel like people’s reliance on social networks is too much. If everyone else decided to go back to simple phone calls and only research on the computer, I would be happy. 

One time my friend and I got in a huge fight and she decided that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. It’s hard to just lose one of your best friends like that, so I apologized to her and she just continued to bitch me out. After we resolved our issues, I was still mad at her for being a bitch even after I apologized for something that I didn’t do. When I sent a text to my other friend about how mad I was at her, because I was thinking about my “x friend,” I sent the text message to her on accident. My heart started racing the second I realized the mistake I had made and I freaked out. Luckily I was able to add something positive on another text and send that one too, like I had meant it to be positive... it was an awful feeling. Anyway social networking tools can be a disaster waiting to happen. It’s so easy for a message to get in the wrong person’s hands and it’s so simple for information to spread even if you don’t want it to... anyway, think twice before you send something through a text or online that you don’t want just anyone to see. 

The Social Network

The movie “The Social Network” was very interesting. I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect when I went to see it, and I was very happily surprised. Right after to movie I wanted to go research everything about Mark Zuckerberg and the whole story of Facebook to see how truthful the movie was. 

The movie makes him seems like a complete asshole. Without knowledge besides the movie, it’s easy to see him as a completely arrogant ass who would do anything to benefit himself. However, I feel like he did what he did for the sole benefit of just creating and being able to share those creations with others. Throughout the whole movie it becomes clear that his idea of Facebook was not to make a profit. While it is worth billions now, that didn’t seem to be his intention when he started it. 

I feel like what Mark Zuckerberg did in his creation of Facebook was amazing and it benefits a lot of people now. However, like in the movie, he did completely back stab his best friend who helped him produce the site. I guess it’s just really easy to get caught up in such a large creation, however, that made it hard to see him as anything but an asshole. Most things that Mark Zuckerberg did point him out as a jerk, like how he stole the idea of an online site like Facebook from the Winklevoss twins; but somehow I feel like he just wanted to create something amazing that people could benefit from; which he clearly succeeded in. The movie shows him in a very negative light, but I think he just got caught up in the magnified moment and he was so passionate about his creation that he forgot how to act like a good person on the way. In the end, however, he made things right by giving a percent of the profit to the Winklevoss twins and his best friend, Eduardo Saverin. What he did payed off in the end and he achieved his goal. Also, they are all making tons of money, so it worked out for all of them. 

However, I have to say that Justin Timberlake’s character in the movie, Sean Parker, drove me crazy. I don’t know if the movie just portrayed him as that way or if he really is that way, but he seemed to be kinda corrupting Mark Zuckerberg in order to benefit himself and to get rid of Eduardo Saverin. He was just too manipulative and I wanted Mark Zuckerberg to realize that Sean Parker was just manipulating him so he could get his money and fame. 

Also, as a side note: The Winklevoss twins in the movie are played by two unrelated people and they just edited the face of one of them over the other’s... I thought that was weird, but super cool!!

Overall, I would definitely recommend the movie to anyone. Everyone uses Facebook so it’s cool to learn how is came about. Were able to relate to it since we know what it is and this is all very recent.  With the movie they were able to make such a seemingly boring thing into something really exciting. So you should definitely go see it!

Blog 1, Question 3: Don't forget face to face relationships

( THIS IS FOR WEEK 4, NOT 3)

3. Technology and Social Interaction

Your task for this assignment is to describe your thoughts on how technology influences social interaction. Do you think the spread of technology has had a positive or negative impact on your everyday face to face interaction? What about for people more generally? What do you think about using the Internet to meet other people (via online dating sites, Craigslist, message boards, fan sites, online gaming, or virtual worlds)? Is connecting to others via online communities a viable way of creating meaningful relationships, or are we neglecting our everyday relationships in favor of these "virtual" relationships? Do we, as a society, need to focus on creating more "real" spaces/public spheres for people to connect, interact, and discuss meaningful political and social issues? 

I feel like there are both negative and positive impacts on social interaction due to the internet. Things such as Facebook make it a lot easier to contact friends or family to meet up for something. Also, information can be accessed so fast and with ease. It seems like at this point, internet is a must in order to be successful or even to keep up with the world today. 

I feel like dating sights can sometimes supplement face to face interaction in the way that you don’t have to experience that awkward moment of going on a date with someone that you’re not attracted to, because you can just weed them all out on the computer. However, dating sites are setting people up for face to face interaction, so it is only a supplement for a short amount of time. 

Sites such as chat rooms are something that I disagree with. While sometimes there are chat rooms for people with similar problems to be able to work through them together, such as depression, this turns the internet into something to hide behind. Real face to face help seems much more supportive and realistic to me. Also, there are dangers to many of these sites. It is extremely easy to create a fake profile and if you are relying on that person to get you through your depression, or whatever thing you need help with, it would be easy to put yourself in a dangerous situation. It seems scary to me to trust in someone or talk to someone every day that you truly don’t know. Realistically, on the internet you can be anyone that you want to be. For some this seems nice because you can create yourself into an idealistic version of yourself, but for me it would be scary that I might not really be talking to the person I thought I was.

However, on a more positive note, the internet has an overall positive affect on my life and social interactions. I don’t feel like I have endangered myself by any of the sites I am a part of or things that I post on Facebook. I am just able to communicate with my friends and family a lot easier and keep close relationships with them.

My cousin spent most of his high school years playing online games with people from all over the world that he doesn’t know. They acted like friends, but really they never even met, but when one of them made a mistake, not knowing the other person personally almost gave them the right to just yell and cuss the other kid out. To me, that doesn’t seem healthy. On the internet he could be good at something and have friends that were like him, but this was at the cost of his face to face relationships, friends at school, and family. Now my cousin has found a way to play his internet games and socialize with people face to face. He goes to gaming conventions. I think just by looking at things like this, our society is trying to hang on to social places where people can go and create personal, “real” relationships with others. I think we should not forget the need for public places, because when the world depends solely on internet and life in a cyber world, there will be nothing real to hold on to or to have real meaning in life.