Social Net'g

Social Networking

            Social Networking is one of the most impactful inventions (for better or for worse) of the 21^st century. These sites allow a large world to shrink and even the playing field for all. Want top talk to your aunt who lives in Bangladesh? No Problem! Want to connect with business professionals in your field about the opportunity to shadow them? Easy! However, to quote Uncle Ben from Spiderman “with great power comes responsibility” and it seems for the most part the responsibility hasn’t come for most people yet.

            Social networking has an almost limitless amount of applications. One of these applications is the use of social media in corporate hiring decisions. According to the article “Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting” by Frank Langfitt, it does just that. The article was specifically referencing the social media site linked in, which has been compared to a Facebook of professionals. This website allows you to create a profile to show people in your industry as well as recruiters in the hopes of landing a job opportunity in the future. Having a strong Linkedin profile has been stressed on me by many people from my brother to a recruiting expert I was able to meet through my internship this Summer. Linkedin is the future and since it was just recently bought by Microsoft for a ton of money, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

            Although there are many positives of social media there is defiantly many negatives as well. One major memory I have from middle school was the emergence of the social media site Formspirng. Basically what Formspring does is allows you to ask anonymous or not anonymous questions to somebody who set up the account, On surface, harmless. However, in the twisted and evil minds of middle schoolers this became a large cyber bullying website. This became such a problem that an assembly was called urging students to be nicer on social media. Luckily I never feel into the trap known as Formspring but I do remember it causing many major problems in my graduating class. According to an article I read “They’re back and They’re Bad; Campus Gossip Websites”, this faceless social media idea has died but instead has evolved. This has become a government issue since cyber bullying is now a crime (which it should be) According to the Maryland Attorney General these websites “home almost exclusively to abusive, harmful, and embarrassing personal attacks…”. Having seen this situation, myself in the past I cant disagree with this attorney. Educating the youth about cyber bullying and social media safety isn’t only necessary but vital to are youth to protect them from the evils of the internet.

            As far as the future of social media goes I think it will become less volatile as the years go on. Think of social media as being in its infancy since it is a relatively knew invention. With time and needed education social media become a place where people can share their thoughts with the world. It would be idiotic to think that all of social media websites will be like this in the future. Of course the Formsprings and other garbage websites like this will always exist, however with an educated youth hopefully the use of these websites will be majorly reduced.