A Mirror to the Way We Live Now?

Social networking, Facebook in particular, is fast becoming a dominant force in shaping the way people stay in touch, organise and spend their leisure time. A research study by Instrata flagged up some issues arising from this change, whilst raising questions about whether it is changing segments of society or simply highlighting the way things already are.

“It is difficult to say whether the changes in communication and models of friendship are caused by these sites or whether Facebook’s popularity is due to a timely commercial response to existing social changes such the flexible workforce that moves regularly and has wider, more dispersed friendship groups,” says Anita Mackenzie Mills from Instrata.

Ironically in the light of debates over social networking and the loss of a real social life, much of the success of Facebook has been its insistence on the use of real names and networks. These networks: academic, workplace and geographical, are where people identify themselves as being part of the previously distinct worlds of virtual communities and real life.

VOYEURISM OR STALKING?
The popularity of social networking in some ways is similar to that of reality TV, but with people you have met, or friends of friends. Part of the appeal is voyeurism, permitted and encouraged because people are happy to post their personal information, including photos, videos, contact details and lists of favourite films, music etc in the knowledge that it can be seen by friends or, depending on your choice of privacy settings, strangers in your networks. Stalking is a term commonly applied to browsing profiles. In this context stalking has begun to lose its very negative connotation, and even become a common in-joke amongst users. There is even a new term “Facestalk” describing this activity. The result is that friends can be very aware of what their contacts are doing, where they are going, see pictures of their nights out, and thus feel very in touch without ever seeing each other, talking or even directly exchanging messages.

PRIVACY
One of Facebook’s benefits is that profiles are less open than MySpace – unless you keep it open to the whole network, only friends you accept can view your page. Even so, during the two weeks when participants kept a diary of their social networking activities a surprising number of misunderstandings, arguments and difficulties arose. A school was having problems with pupils discovering teachers’ Facebook pages. One participant was upset that her boyfriend’s page still stated that he was single, another had suspicions due to her boyfriend’s numerous attractive female friends. A male participant posted a photo of a friend’s “harmless” flirtation on a night out, causing a rift in the friendship and leading him to decide to delete his own profile to avoid future problems.

Like any new communication tool, social networking needs time for users to formulate and understand the necessary unwritten rules of usage. Many of the initial problems have been exacerbated by the high speed of its adoption. There is a chance that these issues could inhibit the growth of social networking, but probably only in the short term while new models of acceptable social network behaviour are being worked out. As Dr Rachel Jones from Instrata says: “Whether social networking is a passing fad or a phenomenon that will change the way we communicate forever remains to be seen.”

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