James Marshall

Over the past 5 years ‘social networking’ has taken off in a big way. This year Facebook celebrates its 5th birthday, but how has the world changed in that time? Has the long-debated ‘Digital Divide’ widened and taken on a new social aspect? Ultimately, will those who choose not to use services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter be worse off in the future?

Let’s start by covering some basics…

‘Social Networking’, to quote that hotly contested font of knowledge – Wikipedia, is: “a social structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.” Now that doesn’t sound too palatable, does it? Essentially social networking can be viewed as a group of like-minded individuals, or causes joined together to share information, ideas and resources. The best and most popular example of a social network is Facebook.

As social networking becomes increasingly popular and successful the number of companies looking to cash-in on that success also increases. However, as much as the social networking scene was once viewed as a niche, something that would never last, it is now being taken very seriously as it is fast becoming the quickest way to disseminate information and news.

News services in particular watch sites such as Twitter and Facebook very closely as breaking news is increasingly being reported by the citizen: for example the Hudson River plane crash in 2009. The September 11th terrorist attacks were widely filmed, photographed and documented in 2001, but it would be very interesting to see how the coverage of the events would be different today with Twitter and Twitpic.

But what about those who choose not to, or cannot take part in social networking?

It is easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding social networking, especially in the technology communities, but the people who opt out of this new world should not be overlooked. Take for example the ‘Events’ feature of Facebook. Currently it allows users to create a forthcoming event, add details about its location, times, and perhaps even some pictures or videos. Invitations can be sent out to other users asking for them to ‘RSVP’. It is a simple, fast way to spread the word about an event and invite people without the hassle of posting paper invitations or making numerous phone calls; but it ultimately leaves out those who do not use Facebook.

It is conceivable that invitations could be drawn up separately for those individuals who do not use the service but for how much longer will this compromise remain acceptable? How long before our lives are run almost totally by technology? Will those people be left out totally?

A similar idea can be applied to news. We are living in a green-conscious environment and it won’t be long before someone points the gun at newspapers and magazines and brings about the mass exodus of these services to the web. How will people who either cannot access, or choose not to access the web cope losing such an important channel of information?

In spite of the perceived benefits of embracing social networking, there are still those out there who are wary of allowing a faceless company to take hold of their most personal details and publish them online. Right or wrong, this Orwellian fear of the system will eventually begin to cause problems for those who fail or refuse to see the point in social networking services. Or will it? Humans are social creatures, they enjoy physical interaction with each other and the objects around them and for the moment at least, that is something technology cannot usurp.