SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES

Social Networking Websites

Social Networking Websites

Introduction

There are numerous websites on the Internet that now allow people of all ages to conceive their own profiles in alignment to rendezvous other persons who may or may not reside beside them (Wagner). MySpace, one of the most popular social networking websites, currently has 76 million users and that number extends to grow everyday by the thousands. Facebook, a well liked communal networking site amidst school scholars, averages 250 million strikes every day. The newspapers has been considering the dangers of communal networking sites more often in the latest months; this has led to numerous persons wanting to ban social networking sites. (Kapp, 2006)

Discussion

Before communal networking sites emerged, persons easily utilised brief talks and note boards. One of the first message boards was created in 1978 by two IBM workers. Ward Christensen and Randy Suess were discussing the newsletter for their computer hobbyist club, which was always looking for articles to publish. Christensen figured that it would be convenient to download all the articles onto a central computer and then put them into a newsletter. They then decided to replace the club corkboards, which was a place that members could leave a message for the club to read by writing it on an index card and posting it. After two weeks they conceived the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS). (Goff, 2006) CBBS quickly became popular and hundreds of users began to discuss many different topics. As the Internet became popular, CBBS became unpopular because of things such as blogs, email, and online newsgroups.

Within the past year it has been common to turn on the news and hear a story about something that involved a social networking site, such as MySpace or Facebook. The stories range from teens getting killed to raped. In September, a 16 year old girl was followed down by a 37 year vintage man who had befriended her on MySpace. The man abducted and molested her. Two other males were arrested in Connecticut in March for having sexual contact with minors whom they met on MySpace. It is events such as the two listed above that are making people question the safety of social networking sites. These events are being reported increasingly in the news in the past few months. After hearing about such things, parents would like to ban social networking sites in order to protect their children. That is a drastic measure that is unnecessary. (Carlson, 2006)

MySpace already has its own security measures in place for its younger users. In order to sign up for a site, a user must be at least 14 years old. If the user admits to being younger than 15, then their profile is automatically private, which means only friends whom they add can view their profile. It is hard to regulate age policies because it is very easy to lie about your age on the Internet. MySpace has recently hired Hemanshu Nigam, a former security executive at Microsoft and a former federal ...