Jason Evans
English 103
Essay 3
Social networking and what it can do for you has been a hot topic for the last decade or so due in large part to the seemingly ever growing uses of such a tool. In the publication, Interactions, I found an essay explaining the trends of social networking and benefits for the future possibilities for this growing phenomenon. While the use of social networking is not new to us, this essay contends that we may have just begun to scratch the surface of what we can utilize our networks to work for us. The authors, Nichole Ellison, Cliff Lampe, and Charles Steinfield, discuss ways in which we not only can use these social mediums to gain a larger circle of friends and contacts, but that we can use them to further common goals in larger organizations of people and use our series of network connections to benefit us in the job market and business as a whole.
The most prevalent users of these social networking sites are younger people, but in this essay, the authors point out that, “as adoption spreads to a wider audience, we expect such changes to be amplified across all segments of society” (Ellison, Lampe, Steinfeld, 2009). The use of social networking has the chance to alter our lives on both a personal and large scale. This ideal is something that these authors are directing at a global audience, and not just a small targeted group of people. Throughout the course of this essay, they highlight many positives for social networking and provide some examples to help give their position merit. While they do advocate for the use of social networking as a positive in society, they do admit that the system is not perfect and has areas which have been exposed and how users have been exploited. They do not, however, give any insight into how these issues could be avoided or addressed.
In the attempt of the authors to convince their audience