Blog Social Networking

          Social networking can be used in a number of different ways for corporations, ordinary people and even people of power. Corporations use social networking these days to market their products or services and they are always willing to pay a lump sum of money to get their ads out on social media. Every one lives on their phones these days so it makes sense why corporations target people on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On the flip side, ordinary people use social media to let their friends know what is going on in their lives, a cool trip they might have gone on, a big event in their life, a celebration, or maybe even what they had for dinner the previous night. We live in a time where the conversations we have with one another can last longer online than in person and it just goes to show that social networks are becoming stronger and stronger. Powerful people like our president can also use social networks to influence people within society. Many followers of Trump on Twitter either really like him or really despise him and regardless of what he says on the platform, people are always on the edge of their seat when he posts a tweet. This just goes to show that day after day, year by year, social networks continue to become more prominent in our lives and its getting to the point where our lives revolve around social networks.
           While it is true that we live our lives more than ever through our phones and on these technologies which can be seen as a bad thing, there are some benefits to these technologies. Social reform these days begins on websites like Twitter and Facebook and people spend a lot of time sharing, reposting, spreading the word of whatever cause they are fighting for. We've also seen that social networking makes it much easier for many people to make friends and learn about things they otherwise would not be able to. Social networking sites these days include all types of content ranging from videos, memes, updates from our friends, news stories, music and much more. There is almost nothing you can't find on social networking sites these days and I think it goes to show that one huge benefit of these technologies is that they create a centralized place for all types of content for all types of viewers regardless of demographic. However, there is a dark side to these technologies. We hear on the news all the time of cyberbullying, sexual harassment, scamming and etc. In the Facebook article "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private", one big issue discussed is the privacy policy within many different social networks. On Facebook, Randi, the sister of Mark Zuckerburg, was shocked to realize that her family photo was available for the public to see rather than just her family. Although this was a very basic case that did not cause any immediate issues, imagine if an image was posted on her Facebook that could cause bad publicity for her family. Social networking can in fact cause some tremendous problems for people who use them. While this is true, it needs to be understood that every new thing that exists is always going to have tradeoffs. Rather than crying about the problems that social media causes we should be weighing the pros against the cons and fighting against the problems we see that have risen. Issues are always bound to happen and we cannot just stop creating new technologies because of the small problems that come from them. In the article, "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers",  it is discussed how people within certain neighborhoods assisted the police in catching drivers breaking the law. This is an example of how while social media does cause many problems for us, the pros of these technologies definitely outweigh the cons.
        Personally, I'm excited to see where Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter go in the future. They used to all be so different in what content you would see on the technologies but as the years have gone by, they have all gotten so much similar. I think that all of these medias will eventually blend into one overall form of social networking and it will all be one application/website that we use. Users of all these websites constantly shuffle through all of them looking at very similar content so I do not see why that isn't possible. Of course time will tell when this might take effect, but I could see it happening within the next 10 years.