Social networking

Social networking allows people to share personal information and communicate with others via websites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Introduction

Social network services are websites that allow people to share information about themselves and to connect and interact with others.

The best known social network websites are:

Social networking sites are most popular with teenagers and young adults. However, their spread to other age groups and for purposes such as learning communities and for professional networking (e.g., Linked In) are increasing.

Video

Here's CommonCraft's short video on social networking:

Risks

Providing any information about yourself on the web involves some degree of risk. These risks can be managed by individuals weighing the risks and benefits for themselves before deciding how much they and what kind of information to disclose through social networking services. An individual can manage risk by deciding whether or not to share information (any information shared is a risk), and, depending on the service, can allow various levels of access to information (e.g., only show information to people who are friends).

People have not been offered jobs or even lost their jobs, for example, when employers become aware of personal information (such as drinking behaviours or photos) available via the individual's social networking pages. For example, social networkers commonly reveal information such as political and religious beliefs, hobbies, favourite music and books, etc. Availability of such information can even occur, for example, from an earlier period of one's life. Thus, caution should be exercised. In addition, there is the risk of attracting identity thieves, stalkers, advertisers, and spammers whenever and wherever personal information is disclosed.

Users of social networking services should also be aware of many privacy concerns arising the fact that most popular social networking sites are owned by commercial companies to whom users give rights to use their personal information as part of the terms of use, e.g., see Does what happens in Facebook stay in Facebook?.

One way to help minimise several of these risks is to create an non-identifying user name for social networking purposes, however sites such as Facebook require actual names to be used.

Try it out

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