Online Social Networking- A perspective

Everyone everywhere somehow wants to become famous. People are not always aware of this quintessential desire but somewhere inside all of us is the desire to be known, cared to begin with and admired, revered, craved and what not to go on. It is this nexus of narcissistic desire that drives the present man to do everything that he does. Blogging is one just weak outlet for some who otherwise cannot become so cool . Well, i seriously do not intend to judge or generalize all bloggers to this single thread driving their "fingers" but it seems that i could at least get into the insight of some bloggers though most of them wont admit it.
With the advent of social networking sites, it isn't a big deal for anyone to express..We are all just a "like" or a "wall" away from expression..I sometimes admire (hey i am actually being sarcastic) some of those wall posts to see that these days people write anything or everything on their own wall or someone's Else's wall and the thread of comments keep on following..

People write on anything virtually. Be it the new car they are driving, the new place they visited, the food they ate, the movie they liked to their present activity, location and immediate future goal to their achievements, failures, desires and turn-offs and if nothing else is possible, simply copying a 'famous' quote or a catchy piece of news from the web. But the question is why does people want to keep a bunch of friends, acquaintances or even strangers updated on every nook and corner of their mind, body or soul. It is difficult to gauge. We know amongst all the people we meet, there are some who are keen to talk and share a lot as opposed to others who are happy to listen and barely open their mouth. It is quite evident that people tend to lose their inhibitions, fears or anxiety more easily on social networking forums and come out more easily. So we generate a new set of people who create quite an identity for themselves without the fear of being ostracized by society which in turn acts as a detriment to their opening up in front of public. Thus in short, it is a great place in the virtual world where people can interact, communicate more freely and stay in touch with each other without any of the hassles which social interactions tend to pose.

However, there is an inherent problem which we may tend to overlook. Whenever something becomes quite as easy as this, people become good in it also quite soon. Naturally there is a tremendous sense of competitiveness which develops amongst the fellow users to outshine each other in terms of the quality of the information they share and the pieces of their daily lives that they bring out. Thus starts the process of reverse action. Instead of social sites being the place where people share their social lives, people start manipulating their social lives to be more appealing in the networking sites. Unconsciously the mind does things with the ulterior objective of being a stand out in some scale on these websites.

In terms of statistics, it seems 1 out of every 12 people in the world seems to be using these forums and this is in respect to just one of the many social sites that people use. So no way could we disregard that this has become the part and parcel of our daily lives and it impacts our daily lives in some sort of a way. Our behavioral patterns are constantly being modified in terms of the peer pressure generated from these sites and we have to constantly live up to the expectations.

I was discussing the aforesaid effect that these sites are having on human nature and behavior with a friend and we were concerned whether it is having a positive or an adverse effect on us. He completely discarded the possibility of no effect simply if we take into account the number of users and the average extent of usage of these users. We could not come towards a straightforward conclusion but it seems our social worlds which depended quite a lot on those parties and gatherings which we attended now solely rests on the shoulders of these magic websites which seems to be the answer for almost 10 % of all the people in the world.

Let us intuitively try to gauge what could happen but more so let us keep our eyes open on these sites and keep observing what people does and where humans are headed in the next generation or so.

Author's Note

This is a open discussion. Just to put people into thinking..Please feel free to comment and append to this discussion article

Reviews

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

Life is definitely changing with fewer degrees of separation. I think the online communities have both good and bad. This seems to be the most positive community I've found, but there are others who misrepresent the population.

The dynamics of social interaction tend to be driven by the same derivatives.
Men and women will take photos that flatter the opposite sex. We see the same behavior in public gatherings where people dress to impress. Avatars can be paralleled to pop culture T-shirts. Some people project an image that is contrary to who they really are with their clothing. Many people talk the talk, but never walk the walk.

The only thing that rocks the boat now, is that a person does not have to be at the top of their peer group to be heard. Anyone can speak out with no regards to social status.

Sociologists may be troubled by the internet age...but I dont think that it is a huge problem in general. I think that in some areas such as online predators, we really need to make ourselves more aware as a society.....

But...We as human beings make the mistake of believing that we are some "next level" of life. We actually have the same forces driving our behavior as any other mammal. We are civilized, but the same primal urges shape our actions any time we interact.

The anonymity of the internet allows people to become characters of their own creation and act out fantasy lives from their imaginations. If we take that into consideration, it is hard to build a legitimate population of online personalities. The personality is too complex to even declare normalcy. We can only recognize a basic structure of patterns.

I think the Social experts are blowing things a little out of proportion. People Jockey for Social Status in life continuously in different ways. I think the online world is simply a different platform.

[Goodbye]

Very interesting essay! As for me, this and Flick.com are the only ones I'm on. I grew bored and frustrated with Facebook, and all the others. I want some sort of meaningful interaction? I go face-to-face. I want to be with my writer friends for some more meaningful interaction? I come here. I couldn't possibly stand any more, so I disconnected.

[Jeff]

With everything in life, the internet and it's social networks have pros and cons. I think we do lose a bit of our human element when we interact this way. However through these very networks, we can meet people who share our interests. Speaking for myself, I have met people from around the world and love that I've had even briefly an interaction with them.

[Jooolie]

THANK YOU. I just did an analysis on this for an article and nobody else in the class had even thought about the issue before. Glad to know somebody else thinks about this kind of stuff :)

And social networks aren't the only things that are getting competitive with their content. A lot of newspapers are getting really cutthroat with their online news. There's also the issue of bloggers that are creating some threat to journalism. Now a lot of people are on Tumblr or whatever and they consider themselves real journalists reporting the news, when actually they typically are just blogging about random things. So that's where the quality of our news is going :P

But yeah, I agree that people are becoming connected on the Internet instead of in person. Funny story, our human attention span used to be 4 to 5 hours in the early 1900s and in the 1960s, it dropped to 2 to 3 hours. Now, since the 1990s, it's down to 8 to 12 minutes. And I think it might have gone down a bit more recently, I can't remember.

It'll be interesting to see if we find a different platform to use in the future or if we stay on the Internet. But I think either way, we probably won't ever be able to go back to the amount of face-to-face conversations or in-depth reading abilities we used to have.

[Nothing Personal]

I appreciate all your comments. i will sit down and follow up with most of you on this "crisis" that remains unrecognized.

[Dream Slave]

Social network sites= Rock band status without being in a rock band. I have a couple of friends that I see on FB all day everyday posting about doing this or doing that, saying they love someone when that person doesn't post anything back. Yet they keep doing it because they have psychologically developed a need to "inform" everyone and anyone who might care of what is going on in their lives. It changes them from being maybe an introverted person to an extroverted at least online. They put more weight on what comments back on their status say about them than what people actually around them in a day to day basis think about them, they boost their ego where they think they are actually not equal with everyone else. Then comes depression from coming back to Real Life. Makes them try things they never had thought of doing, etc, etc so their notoriety grows.

[roarke]

Change creates itself. There is no "virtual" world that can replace the real, geo-physical world. Interaction in one, only resembles interaction in the other, but the outcomes and consequences are totally different. Choosing one over the other either continues the extent of the change or slows it's progress. Interesting discussion, HUGE topic and one that changes every day. Quality should always be a defining factor along with intelligence, intent and integrity. An old cliche applies here, "you get out of it what you put into it" Talk to tangible people, look and interact with real environments, believe in what you can actually respond to with your five senses. Participate in the viscerally tangible and your life will be far richer. Technology and trends are prosthetics. Experience the real world organically.

It's not the tool, but how you use it.

[Hollow Man]

where's the 'like' button for this blog?? oh wait, this isn't fb. I appreciate you addressing the topic of social-networking without placing too severe of a negative or positive conotation over it. I hope your readership is vast and open-minded. It is an issue of importance in an evergrowing technological world that all should understand the possible implications of.

KGS

[Matt Pellegrini]

I tend to agree with your general thoughts about the effects social networking and the Internet have had on people. It has given most people an easy way to try and be heard, however most of the time it's just regurgitated facts and ideas. As you said, posting famous quotes, writing about a new car, these are the kinds of things we all experience and are well aware of. In a way, I could see how it helps connect all humanity universally by sharing things in common, but personally, I feel it's too much talk and speak for the sake of just hearing oneself.

If there was a tax on speech for each word spoken or typed, how many of these people would really feel it was necessary to post all the repetitive things they post?

The big problem I feel with the social networking is the creation of not a just a "new" identity, but of "the" identity for a person. People are very quickly becoming and feeling more connected to the identity of their username or their profile than their real life identity. For some, how they look and seem on their profiles is more important than how they look and act in real life.

I don't imagine it would ever get to this point, but if the feeling that one's identity on the internet is "the" identity becomes the prevalent thought in the future, it would drastically change the way of life.

Writers and Technology tend to go hand in hand. Writers throughout time periods have questioned, feared, and embraced the technology of their time via writing.

[DamienHino]

impressive analysis