Social Networking

Today, Social Networking has become extremely popular. No matter the age, ethnicity, gender or profession, people have quickly integrated the idea of staying connecting and building relationships with others through websites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Linkedin. The main purpose of social networking is staying in touch with friends and family. However, today social networking comes with many benefits such as expanding your professional network, getting in touch with key people that can help you in the future with a job recommendation, get you a job or provide you with advice. An example is seen in Frank Langfitt's article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting”, “what really makes Linkedin helpful is that it allows users to share their online Rolodexes. Shally Steckerl used to hunt talent for Microsoft and is a leader in online recruiting. With Linkedin, he can find people faster using a vastly increased network of contacts.” With Linkedin people are able to share all their professional experience and academic activities to potential employers.

Moreover, social networking has served as a channel of communication with the entire world to express beliefs, concerns and interests. Frank Langfitt's says "Social networking can also be used in a non-work related way to display your thoughts and opinions". People use social media as a method of entertainment. But today not only individuals are using social networking, many businesses are taking advantage of it to increase brand loyalty and become more innovative. They create social profiles for their companies where they give updates of products, provide a comment box for clients to provide feedback and also advertise their products or services through their profiles and advertise special events they might have in the future. Companies have also used social networking in the workplace in order to enhance and promote collaboration and diversity among employees. The article "Is Myspace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum" by Stephen J. Dubner, he gives the example of IBM creating a social network for employees to provide better channels of communication and collaboration " IBM, for instance, has created an internal social network site, “Beehive,” to encourage more collaboration and communication across teams".

Unfortunately, almost every good thing has its negative effect. The dark side of social networking has significantly impacted our society and enabled those that are evil to do more evil on others. Many aspects include: Cyberbullying, child pornography, employers having access to inappropriate activities or pictures you may have causing employment rejection, identity theft (it has become very popular and easy through social networking). Hackers are now able to steal your information (most of it you display yourself on these websites) making easier for people to guess or steal your personal information.  Another issue is stalking people since they post pictures of where they are or check in to places letting other people know everywhere they go. This makes extremely easier for them to harass or follow other with the intentions of doing bad to them.


In my opinion, social networking can be good only to a certain extent, you as a user should control the amount of information you display online. Think twice before you post, because once it goes viral it will be there forever. Also the less personal information you post the better. You should only take advantage to post you achievements, professional experience, academic activities, etc. This will highlight your intellectual abilities and attract future employers. Social networking is good because it lets you connect with people from around the world, make sure to use that to your advantage in becoming successful but remember to be always cautious.