Social Media and Its Effect on Human Behavior
Online social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn, already popular with millions for their easy ability to help people forge connections based on common interests, also have become ideal "laboratories" for social scientists who want to study human behavior.
"The volume of online social networking is exploding, and it appears it is becoming more pervasive than real-life social networking," said Dan Stefanescu, professor of mathematics and computer science at Suffolk University in Boston, where he is directing several projects using online social networks as a research tool. "This is not surprising, given the ease with which one can pursue interactions in the digital world."
Furthermore, in an online social network environment, "it is so much easier to find new 'friends' for social intercourse because, unlike in real life, one can reach the 'friends' of 'friends' of 'friends' of your 'friends,' ad infinitum," he added.
Data available from online networks can provide insights into certain behaviors—how people will vote in upcoming elections, for example, or what consumer products they are likely to buy—and also can prompt blueprints for engineering new social systems, and predicting certain events and economic outcomes, he said.
In the job market, for example, information obtained from social networks can improve "the ability to find better employer/employee matches which, in turn, imply better productivity, and reduction in wasteful jobs and hiring search costs," he said.
Furthermore, activity on massive online social networks potentially could help small businesses grow more quickly, via word-of-mouth advertising on Twitter, for example, or enhance the marketing of certain products that might not otherwise be heavily advertised, such as independent films.
The process also could create new businesses by