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Social Website Woes

What's your view?

The Good
Like most things in this world, clear-cut distinctions between good and bad, between constructive and destructive, between optimistic and cynical, are rather difficult to find. In the case of the Internet, and specifically these online communities, the line often becomes even more blurred. This is, many argue, because of the nature of the Internet: It is an anonymous medium, and therefore people feel comfortable sharing things about themselves or others that would be rather difficult to express face-to-face, or even over the telephone. The Internet is faceless and voiceless, and the distance created by words on a screen makes many people feel anonymous enough to open up more than they would in other venues.

This can be a good thing. Through the Internet, and the online communities that have subsequently been created, people have grown closer than they ever have been before. Online friendships now span the globe. Information and opinions about everything from the croissants in a specific Parisian café to the latest gossip about pop stars in Japan are available with the tapping of a few keys. Because of the Internet, the world has shrunk in size, and people from all over the world and from every point along the social, philosophical, and ideological spectrum have come together. The cross-cultural dialogue that has been facilitated by the Internet is nothing short of astounding.

The Bad
The down side of this is that privacy has become virtually non-existent. Cookies and spyware have made anonymous Web-surfing an impossibility. This is bad enough. But it is a mere nuisance compared to the kind of privacy people lose on sites like MySpace. The nature of a such a site, after all, is that people share private information—both about themselves, and, perhaps even worse, about others.

When online communities like MySpace are used by mature adults who arguably know the results of their actions, the consequences can arguably be minimized. A grown man of 30, for example, has every right to share whatever he wants to about himself in an online community. And though some of what he divulges may be a bit off-putting at times, he at least has all the facilities and life experience necessary to make those decisions in as informed and considered a way as possible.

The real danger is when children start discussing private things online. For they do not, after all, have the necessary tools to make the kind of informed choices their adult counterparts do. And as a result, they often find themselves in trouble.

When this sharing among children is limited to information swapping among themselves, the results are bad enough. The rumor mills of middle- and high schools, for example, have, throughout the generations, been some of the most vicious and mean-spirited any of us have ever had to deal with. But in the past, the potential distance that these rumors could spread was limited to the number of people one knew. With online communities like MySpace, however, the distance these rumors and innuendos can spread is limited only by the number of people who are willing to listen.

It is not unheard of these days for a teenage boy and girl to go out on a date, share an innocent good-night kiss at the end of it, and immediately head for their respective computers and share with the world everything that happened on the date. And while this may seem harmless enough, the discussion of the events does not simply end there: In the same way as whisper-down-the-lane works, facts and assertions get twisted around, lies evolve into supposed truth, and by the next day, it is wholly possible for everyone in the school to know about what happened; they may even believe all kinds of awful things that never happened. The rumor mill keeps on churning, and reputations and fragile adolescent psyches are shattered.

All because of too many people knowing too many details about too many lives.

The Ugly
Sadly, however, this kind of rumor-mongering is one of the smallest of the problems faced by the younger generations. The anonymity of the online world, after all, has proven to be the perfect hunting ground for a particularly despicable kind of monster—those who would use the freedom of the Internet to take advantage of those who simply might not know better.

MySpace community members share information about themselves and meet new people based on their profiles. But just because someone describes himself in a particular way does not necessarily mean he is telling the truth. The Internet, after all, is an obscuring medium, which is to say that the many layers of it allow people to easily hide who or where or what they really are. And once a person’s identity is adequately obscured, he or she essentially has what amounts to a free pass to do whatever they want with virtual impunity.

It is possible to sign up for an account on MySpace using a false name and a false email address. Any kind of predator can make up any identity he or she wants in the world of online communities, and once a viable “person” has been created, it is possible to take advantage of literally the entire world of unsuspecting MySpace and other online community users.

The authorities have, of course, tried to do what they can. Sometimes even police officers and federal agents pose as children and other vulnerable people on these sites in the hopes of catching those who would do them harm. But it is a necessarily loosing battle: Since there are an infinite number of people out there who use these online communities, and a very limited number of law-enforcement officials who are available to patrol them, simple arithmetic tells us that it is just not possible to protect everyone.

Now What?
Sadly, there is not much to be done on a large scale. Like the Wild West, the Internet is virtually ungovernable beyond a certain point. That means, then, that it is up to individuals and institutional groups to do what they can to protect the innocent from those who wish to do them harm.

Parents can monitor their children’s use of certain Web sites. Schools can block access to the most obviously harmful or dangerous communities. But even that is just a Band-Aid on a hemmhoraging wound. And then there are issues of legality when it comes to those kinds of solutions.

In the end, then, the best thing to do is teach people about the dangers of online communities and make them aware of the kinds of predators that lurk out there in the cyberworld, as well as the risks of sharing personal information in a forum whose bounds are limitless. It’s not a panacea, but right now, it’s the only option we have.

Article contributed by Brian Freedman

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Mark Shay is the founder of EDU - a leading academic advertising provider, - part of Halyard Education Partners, a leader in student lead generation and enrollment management services.