Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and countless other online communication forums have become the new town hall (amusement arcade) for tech-savvy young people. On Sept. 26, Facebook - previously open only to individuals associated with academic communities, major companies and high school students - opened membership to anyone with an e-mail address.
Noshir Contractor , a UI professor of speech communication and psychology, researches the emergence of communication and knowledge networks, and is co-author of the book "Theories of Communication Networks." He discusses the appeal of sites such as Facebook among members of the "Millennial Generation."
The number of people - especially students and other young people - creating and using accounts on these sites seems to be increasing at exponential rates. What's the big attraction?
In general we have done a better job of using communication technologies and the Internet to communicate with people anytime, anywhere. It is only recently that we have begun the exploring the use of the Internet to identify who it is that we may want to communicate with based on shared or complementary interests. The desire for us to use the Internet for selecting who it is that we want to communicate with (or "friend") is at the heart of the recent explosion in social networking web sites. It represents a basic human desire for sociability - to find out who knows who, who knows what, who knows who knows who, and who knows who knows what.
When media reports began drawing attention to the fact that these sites are accessible not just by young people's designated "friends," but by parents, prospective employers, police and even stalkers, many users reported being shocked and insulted to learn that other people are invading "their" spaces. Yet, even after the risks associated with posting private information in such public spaces have became better known and understood, many users are reluctant to change their habits or become more discrete. What's going on there?
The Millennial Generation (people born in the 1980s and 1990s) appear to have a different (lower) concern about privacy than the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers. They appear to be more comfortable with the idea of "soft surveillance" than those of earlier generations. In part, this might reflect their acceptance of the fact that the added benefits of the Internet in general, and social networking technologies in particular, are inevitably accompanied by a modest relinquishing of privacy.
With Facebook's recent decision to allow anyone to join, do you expect to see any noticeable differences in usage patterns?
I do not expect a sudden disruptive change in the usage patterns. However, I see an incremental evolution in the level of "social-networking literacy" in society. We are still in the process of developing norms for the usage of this new phenomena. This is reminiscent of society's early forays into the use of e-mail and listsservs (distribution lists) two decades ago and controversy surrounding their abuse ("flaming").