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Social Networking

No one is ever satisfied. We are all looking for a way to improve upon ourselves, improve our business ventures, improve our life, etc. We all just want more. There are sayings like "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," but we live in a society where it doesn't have to be broke for us to want to improve it. Even though change is not the easiest thing to adapt to, we still must go through it and therefore we sometimes initiate it to get ahead of the game.

Current day technologies have been used in more ways than anyone could have guessed when the technology was invented. For example, LinkedIn has always been a social networking platform that allowed us to connect with one another professionally. Those looking for a job can share their resume and those seeking those looking for a job can search them up. Especially during current times with COVID, this platform has become quite useful for recruiting. In a podcast on NPR, Shally Steckerl said that "with social networking, [he didn't] need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends [were]. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, [he had] a thousand contacts that could potentially lead [him] to 100,000, now [he had] 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead [him] to 4.5 million" (Langfitt, 2006). Through social networking he was able to connect to a lot more people than he would have been able to without platforms like LinkedIn. This in turn means that a lot more people are able to find jobs through social networking if they meet certain requirements that a job is looking for. However, he made sure to mention that social networking was not the end of recruiting someone for a job. From there you would need to get to build a relationship with them and according to Steckerl that would be where a phone would come into play. 

While social networking has been seen to have a positive effect on society, nothing is ever truly all positive. With all these new business opportunities and connections being made there are also doors being left open for people such as identity thieves. People are sharing all types of data on all of these different social networking platforms whether it be for professional or personal purposes. On these social networking sites you tell small things about yourself which are according to Lance Hoffman, a George Washington University computer science professor, "revealing far more than they know. Third-party applications, he argued, can take that data outside of the friendly confines of a social networking site and combine it with data from other sources to piece together enough information to steal a person’s identity" (Leaving 'Friendprints': How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security 2009). We put our data out there thinking that it's safe simply because we set a few privacy settings on our account, but like we learned before, information on the internet wants to be free. In the case of Randi Zuckerberg, she thought that she was just sharing a picture to her friends, but because she had tagged people in her post, friends of friends also had access to see, like and share the post which is exactly what happened (Greenfield, 2012). 

In the future we might better learn to adapt to these holes and gaps in technology that allow others to steal our identity and see things that we don't want them to see, but then a new problem would occur. Someone out there would find a way around the new security measures put in place and then someone else would have to find a way to stop them from doing that. The cycle won't ever really end, but no one is willing to give up. Maybe eventually people will just accept that once you put your information on social networking sites then you are ultimately handing over a piece of your privacy and opening yourself up to new dangers. That is life after all. Trial and error until the very end. 


Sources

Langfitt, F. (2006, November 22). Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting. Retrieved            September 30, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523

Jun 10, 2. (2009, June 10). Leaving 'Friendprints': How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy    and Personal Security. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from                                                                        https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/leaving-friendprints-how-online-social-networks-are-           redefining-privacy-and-personal-security/

Greenfield, R. (2013, October 30). Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from                                                                                     https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-           zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/320164/

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