2. Social Networking and Privacy

2. Social Networking and Privacy

Social networking is the key to a girl’s heart. It seems now a days social networking is the key to anyone’s heart, brain, life, and just about everything else. Social networking allows us the ability to stalk…privately. This is a great invention for all of those people who like to waste time, not be productive, and waste a couple hours of their day. Unfortunately I too have fallen into the trap that is facebook. I waste time, don’t do homework, and occasionally wonder about friends that I haven’t kept in best contact with. I use my Facebook about once a day until I really have nothing else too look at and have exhausted my news feed to the point where you refresh it and person’s status was posted 2 seconds ago, then 1 minute, then 5 minutes, while you beg for something to be posted because you don’t want to do that really important thing that you should probably be doing.  We have all been there, but what are we really doing. Is any of this actually positively contributing to our lives. In my view, no. I can honesty say that my Facebook was created and managed for the longest time by my ex girlfriend, who is no longer my friend (facebook official). And the only reason I kept it was because everyone had one, just like any other pointless American trend. I do not have anything else other than Facebook just because I don’t see the point. Myspace is Facebook for 12 year olds, Twitter serves no purpose but to let everyone know what your doing at every minute of your life, and I had never even heard of foursquare before this class, so in my mind it still doesn’t exist.

People like to argue with me and tell me that Facebook helps you keep in contact with friends, I know for a fact that that is not true. A lot of peoples friends on Facebook are one time acquaintances, and you only write on a handful of people’s walls, except during birthdays when you wish him or her a happy birthday when in reality if you were to walk into that person you would not even know its their birthday, even if you did just comment their wall. I believe that true friends do not need to use their long distance as an excuse to get/need a facebook.

Many facebook users complain about privacy, but what do you expect? It’s a social networking site, the things that you publish are suppose to be seen by other people. And if you don’t want him or her to see that picture delete them. The issue of privacy in Facebook is pretty much a summary of lazy America. We want a cake, and eat it too. You cant put pictures everywhere and not have people to see them, that defeats the point of posting the picture.  I never have to worry about any of this because I know what I’m doing, I know the 300 friends I have and everything I post up I do not need to hide. Simple as that.