Social network sites are great resources for staying in contact with friends and family. Websites like Facebook and Twitter allow users to update their statuses and tag their locations. Online friends can “like” the status updates or posts and even “comment” on them to share their thoughts. Users can share photos publicly or privately with one another. All of these functions are ways of sharing the latest information that people want to share with their friends and family.
In addition, social networking sites give people the opportunity to find jobs and careers. For example, LinkedIn is a website that helps users with finding employment. Professionals can create their profiles, listing their work experience and skills. Recruiters visit sites like these to hire potential employees. They can do this by typing in the job skills that they are looking for in the search bar and results will show people with matching skills and interests. From there employers can read each LinkedIn profile to learn about the candidates and determine who may be a good match to interview for the job. All types of recruiters from any sized companies or agencies use LinkedIn. There are over 8 million LinkedIn users and some of these users are from big companies. An article titled "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" written by Frank Langfitt states “LinkedIn says users include executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies.” This speaks about the popularity of LinkedIn as professionals of top companies also use this online website. It is an easy and convenient way for people to find jobs and employers to recruit.
As helpful and useful these sites may be, there are privacy concerns that not many users consider. Anything anyone posts may be seen by anyone around the world. Information spreads quickly and once it does it is hard to remove. You can never truly delete anything off the Internet because once it is posted, people can save what you posted without your knowing. In the article “Leaving ‘Friendprints’: How Online Social Networks are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security”, Lance Hoffman, a George Washington University Professor, states "Just a person’s name and birth date — routinely found on a Facebook profile — can be a useful lever for an identity thief.” Some people may think that they are only displaying their names and birthdays to their friends and their friends’ friends but this is not the case. This information can be accessed and shared with anyone especially if the user’s privacy settings enable Facebook to do so. Some people such as identity thieves or hackers are constantly developing advanced technology to steal people’s identities and information.
Privacy settings are not as easy to adjust, as they may be confusing. In the article “Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn’t Private” written by Rebecca Greenfield talks about how a family photo posted by the sister of Facebook founder Randi Zuckerberg was supposed to be private but a stranger was able to see it on her newsfeed and posted it up somewhere else. Greenfield states “And if Facebook’s privacy settings are too confusing for a Zuckerberg, how are the rest of us ever supposed to post anything that’s truly, completely private?” The sister of the founder must have been unaware of her privacy settings or the privacy policy changes. The policies change often enough that users should be updating their settings from time-to-time. If people are not aware of what information they allow to share with the public, their information can spread virally.
Social networking is a huge part of society today that it is hard to avoid. It is a part of everyday life. Even though it has been helpful with maintaining relationships with people and finding jobs, people may become too attached to social networking sites. It is already happening now. Some friends don’t see each other as much anymore because they rather communicate through social networks. They don’t talk on the phone as much anymore either. Some couples can be seen on their phones when they're eating at restaurants. The traditional kind of human interaction has diminished down to interaction through social networking sites, which changes the social behavior and interactions. There needs to be a balance between using social networking sites when necessary and maintaining actual human interactions.
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