Social Networks effects on society

If you are thinking a year ahead - plant seeds
If you are thinking 10 years ahead - plant a tree
If you are thinking 100 years ahead - educate the people

The number of minutes on social networks in the U.S. rose 83% in April from the same month a year ago according to Nielsen Online. The total number of minutes spent on Facebook surged 13.9 billion in April this year from 1.7 billion a year ago, making it the No.1 social network. Social networking seems to be growing at epidemic proportions; nevertheless there is practically no research done on the possible effects engaging in this activity might cause to society,

Following are some of the possible harms suggested by Professor Greenfield:

* Social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy. If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviors and call them attention-deficit disorder. It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might b linked to the threefold increase over this period on methylphenidate, prescription, the drug used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

* Social networking sites can provide a constant reassurance that you are listened to, recognized, and also important. Instead the face-to-face, real life conversation, which is far more unpredictable and stressful than the computer mediated one happens in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses, exposes your voice tone, body language, and probably even your emitted pheromones (which are molecules that transmit mainly sexual and social messages that others perceive unconsciously).

* Real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.

* The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction. So we should not underestimate the 'pleasure' of interacting with a screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young people.

Following are some of the possible benefits:

* Social networks will become people’s new communications hub. They already provides a diverse set of options for connecting with more people than ever, in chat rooms, with IM and in real time broadcasts.

* Information obtained via social networks is more trusted than non vetted information. Just like in the real world where I would probably ask my lawyer friend for legal advice, we will begin our online searches first within our social networks.

* Law of numbers, 2/3 off Americans use one form of social media or another. Social networks are becoming our filter into the big and sometimes overwhelming world of Google. Our networks will help us sort good from bad information.

*Social networking sites actually appears to reduce loneliness and improve well-being, as was reported as long ago as 2002 in the Journal of Social Issues, People who have difficulties with conventional socializing, such as those with Asperger's syndrome, experience great benefits. As for social networking sites being a poor alternative to real-world socializing, surveys reported at a conference in 2006 indicate that Facebook users mostly use it to maintain relationships with people they meet offline.

Mental Hacker

In humans, the short-term storage of information—as when you enter an acquaintance’s Email into your iPhone’s memory—is associated with conscious processing.

A few years ago, when I was first learning about memory, the example probably would have gone more like “your short term memory holds small amounts of information, like a phone number, while you rehearse it in your head until you have it memorized”.

The main difference between the examples is that the iPhone has replaced our own biological memory storage as the final resting place of long term memories. I think this points toward a more general trend, in which technology is taking over many of the functions that our brains carried out before. Why memorize a phone number when you can, at any time, just retrieve it on a screen with a few swipes of your finger? Why commit the times table to your memory when a calculator is always close at hand?

Storing memories outside of our brains is nothing new. Scrawling something on paper is much the same. However, the ease with which we can store and retrieve these external memory banks is improving at an exponential rate. Today, a lot of the human race’s collective store of knowledge can be searched in fractions of a second with a few keystrokes in a search engine. Maybe tomorrow, our fingers won’t even be an intermediary step; a direct link between our minds and databases need not be science fiction. Google may become the major influence in how human beings think, behave and learn.

As we continue to improve our access to information outside of our heads, I think there will be less emphasis on teaching people raw information, and more emphasis on teaching what to do with information. Scientific research into topics like human creativity (which computers don’t seem to have mastered yet) and cognitive psychology will become increasingly important, along with other disciplines that deal with how to manipulate information into something usefull.