Social Networking

Technologies can be used for just about anything. They are used as a form of communication, education, entertainment, enhancing businesses,shopping, research, statistics etc etc etc... There is basically nothing that you can't do with today's technology. You don't even need to leave your house anymore! For anything! Social networking sites are a great way to learn new things and meet new people. These sites are beneficial for many reasons. Businesses emphasize how much Facebook and sites similar to it have been the best thing for job recruitment ."Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" explains this in detail throughout the article. "With my Rolodex, I had to call any one of these thousand people and say, 'Hey, Bob. I'm looking for someone that does this, or I'm looking for someone in this industry, or I'm looking for a job, who do you know?'" Steckerl says. "With social networking, I don't need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends are. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, I have a thousand contacts that could potentially lead me to 100,000, now I have 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead me to 4.5 million."This is an amazing enhancement in businesses all over the world. People can hire the perfect candidates as well as do complete background checks before even meeting the person and viewing a spruced up resume. Another example of how it is beneficial is seen in an article about India and traffic violators. "The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos". This is a groundbreaking establishment. Crime can be heavily reduced by a website ! 
Despite all these benefits, there is in fact a "dark side" to these technologies in society. The internet has become an increasingly dangerous place. According to an article from iTWire .. "The advice is still to be wary of strangers on the street, especially if they’re offering you candy. But with social interaction now fully available in today’s immersive Web 2.0 environments that are both online meeting space and a new form of ‘virtual reality’, kids are finally learning they need to be as careful and as street smart online as they are off". Teens do use these sites as a means of meeting people and it is a lot easier then it used to be. The internet is a scary place. Your identity is no longer secure and anyone who is interested as to finding out about you is able to within minutes if not seconds. I believe these technologies might ruin us as a society. People have become so fixated on things such as Facebook that we are losing our true sense of self. People are becoming lazier and concerned about what other people are doing and updating their statuses opposed to actually going out and experiencing reality. Economically I feel technology will only heighten businesses and will lead to things we probably can not even fathom.

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