Digital America - Social Networking

For the growing digital age in America it comes as no surprise that social networking is at the forefront of America. With sights such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Tumblr it makes it almost impossible to not keep up to date with what people are doing.

In finding this article http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/half-of-america-is-using-social-networks/ it states that ‘Half of America is using Social Networking.’ This is such a large number of people for such a relatively new concept. The article begings by saying “For the first time, half of all adults in the United States said they used a social networking site” this statement is backed up by Pew Research Centre http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Social-Networking-Sites.aspx which found that “65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago.” As this survey took place in 2011 we can only assume that the number has once again risen.

The article raises some interesting points in which to justify the growth in adult uses on social networking sites. “Parents use Facebook to vet nannies, carmakers to introduce new models, police to keep tabs on suspects. Federal government authorities are preparing this weekend to use social networking sites for hurricane preparation on the East Coast.” Social networking sites are no longer purely to keep in contact anymore. They allow privacy barriers to be broken as people use it as a way to check up and judge a person on what they post or do on these sites. In many aspects this seems like a reasonable thing if like the article you wanted to “vet nannies” but in reality not everything that goes online is a true reflection of a person good or bad. Online sites such as these allow people to control what they post and often allow them to take on a different persona or identity that they don’t have in the real world. The idea of advertising on these platforms has transformed social networking in to a money making forum for adverts. People are met with no doubt at least one advert whilst on social networking sites and by encouraging people to ‘Like’ certain things and products the sales people have successfully promoted there product to millions of people that will then ‘Share’ or ‘like’ them too. The media within social networking sites have become big on such sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The news no longer has to be watched or read from a newspaper, current events are constantly being updated through ‘Tweets’ and all articles can be read online through Facebook apps. By doing so people are more update and aware of what is going on and even ‘Trending’ on Twitter can bring any event to the attention of millions of people.

With every positive aspect of social networking there is however a negative and the article states that “One in five respondents, however, sounded less upbeat. They used words including “boring,” “time-consuming” and “overrated.”” With people spending so much time on social networking sites for more than just the casual check, it has lead the way for people to be ‘bored’ with something that it such a new concept. It is the boredom of people that leads the way to however new features of these sites so they are no longer just for contacting people, but an arena for endless possibilities of new updates and further time consuming ideas.