A Parent’s Guide to Social Networking
The Products that Let you Find People In Cyberspace
Published: January, 2005
My college-aged kids all belong to a social network called www.facebook.com. Started by two students at Harvard, the facebook is meant to be the online version of the popular facebooks used on college campuses that include pictures and profiles of each student.
In the online version kids can search the facebook for someone to study with, a date for the weekend, or to find out more about the cute guy at the party the night before. All you need to be a member of the club is a .edu extension on your email address.
Like www.Friendster.com before it, The Facebook is attracting college kids in droves and while they’re limited to searching people from their own college, they can link to kids at other colleges, causing one big interlinked college-kid network.
Over the winter holidays my son got a Facebook message from someone claiming to be alumni of his high school. He said he was starting a company and looking for extra holiday help. It turns the searcher was NOT a fellow student, nor a high school alum. It was a marketing company and this was their recruiting tool. My son was lucky he only got lured to a sales pitch.
As social network websites multiply its likely things will get worse. Some crazy stalker could be just as likely as a marketing scam. Just like chat rooms or instant messages before them, kids will be all too naive about this latest form of communications. The wrong people will infiltrate these networks. And, while most social networkers today are older kids in high school and college, we all know how quickly these trends trickle down.
The first part of your task as a parent is to understand what a social network is and how they operate. Then, in part two, we’ll look at some of benefits and perils.
What is a Social Network?
It’s a place in cyberspace for people looking to find others who share common interests. There are many variations on theme.
The Grown Up Networks:
www.match.com That’s right; an online dating service is a social network of sorts. You put your profile up on the site in the hopes of attracting another person for a serious relationship.
www.Linkedin.com This site was designed for professionals in the workplace to network. The catch is that you must get permission to speak to someone who’s not in your immediate social group. Each LinkedIn member has a profile and they can invite other friends to be in their group. Let’s say I wanted to find Bill Gates and ask him for a job. I might start with a friend of mine who knows a friend who knows another friend who’s in Bill Gate’s group. I would ask each one of these people for an introduction into their group and make my way up the foodchain. ( www.ryze.com and www.tribe.net ) are similar services.
www.meetup.com This site gives people who share interests and want to get together in the real world a chance to meet kindred spirits on line. Meetup.com gained notoriety when Howard Dean’s campaign used to mobilize a grassroots effort, but you can find fellow backpackers, Scrabble players, booklovers, or chefs in your neighborhood just as easily.
The Kids Networks:
www.NeoPets.com Maybe your kids already play on Neopets.com? If they do you know that the pets they create go off into cyberspace and interact with other pets. This is a type of social network only of virtual beings. The kids exchange messages live their different personalities through their pet creations.
www.Xanga.com and www.livejournal.com Considerably more dangerous than Neopets, these two sites allow kids to post personal journals that can be open to the public or password protected. Kids are attracted to these sites and they will put personal pages on line that describe their lives — everything from hating their teacher to the latest events in their sex lives. For some reason they feel fine about saying things online, for the entire world to see, even though they probably wouldn’t feel comfortable telling their best friends some of what they announce in public.
www.Friendster.com Friendster is the granddaddy of social networks with an emphasis on the social. You invite others to be in your network of friends and their friends become your friends. When you fill out the Friendster profile you’ll be asked if you’re looking to date or just help out . Friendster profiles reveal a lot of personal information — popular culture, geography, hobbies, politics, are in almost all of the personal profiles. It’s not strictly limited to young users, but the majority of its’ members appear to be aged 18- 35. You can search your Friendster network for other potential friends that have a particular characteristic: “Yale” , “ColdPlay” or “Catcher in the Rye” for example.
New Types of Social Networks
The most interesting types of social networking may be when it’s built into other sites we use. For example, www.evite.com and www.netflix.com let you inivte friends to parties and order DVDs in the mail, but they both have social networking components. A group of regular evite users can share and recommend places to go like restaurants. A Neflix group that you create can share information about movies. Travel sites use social networking to share travel tips, and now we’re sites sites like www.insider.com that let you share your opinion on a plumber or a contractor.