By Sophie Kelly
SOCIAL media mania has swept the world faster than you can say swine flu, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Even The Mammy has joined Facebook!
In case you’ve been under a rock lately, social media describes people who use websites to share content like thoughts, photos, videos and so on, as producers.
Social networking, on the other hand, is the grouping of individuals into specific categories, like small rural communities or a neighbourhood. Although social networking is possible by person-to person interaction (especially in the workplace, universities and secondary schools), it is most popular online.
The most popular social networking sites are Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and Twitter. The top social network, Facebook, stated that it has an average of 40 million updates a day.
By now, you must have had a few people in your ear saying: “Did you join Facebook yet?” and “You NEED to visit Twitter!”
But behind the simplicity of logging on with your witty username at the ready lie very sinister sides to social networking sites.
People making ‘friends’ with the ‘friends’ of mere usernames, and then trusting the messages they receive, makes them a hot target for hackers.
Malicious code spread by social networking sites is ten times more damaging than virus-laden emails.
Over the summer, Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours, while Facebook was ‘downgraded’ because of nifty little hackers.
The popular sites were the victims of what is called denial-of-service (DOS). This often involves a company’s servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them. “Attacks such as these are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter, for intended customers or users,” said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, on the company’s blog.
The service was restored shortly after the blog post, but the companies have had to continue fending off the attack. Facebook said its service was reduced but not taken offline. OK, so if you’re wary of hackers and you are careful, then what’s the problem?
Well, hackers may be the last thing you need to worry about when you join a site like Facebook. How about having your very own stalker?
In England recently, a stalker who was obsessed with a mother-of-three, was jailed for life after breaking into her home and shooting her with a bolt gun. John McFarlane (40) executed 38-year-old Mary Griffiths in front of her daughters, just hours after she had phoned police to voice her concerns about him. McFarlane was taking revenge after she posted a message on Facebook saying he was “delusional” if he thought they would ever have a relationship.
This case begs the question: if Mary Griffiths had not used such a public forum as Facebook to make her feelings known to McFarlane, would he have snapped that night?
If you get past the fact that hackers may gain access to all your details, and that potential stalkers could be reading your profile page, you may turn your attention on how personal your page should be.
Take Penelope Trunk, for example. On 21 September, Penelope, who runs her own career advice website, was in a board meeting and tweeted the following message: “I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage.
Thank goodness, because there’s a f***ed-up three-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.”
With more than 20,000 followers, her message spread like wildfire. Within hours, she began receiving vicious hate-mail and tweets that she had overstepped the mark on what kind of personal information is acceptable in ‘Twitterverse’.
It sparked outrage not just in America but internationally. The Australian Christian Lobby (the body formerly known as the Australian Christian Coalition) got in on the act and issued Ms Trunk with a death threat! That doesn’t sound very Christian-like to me.
Trunk was baffled. She saw Twitter as an open forum where she could document important events in her day-to-day life, and she thought that having a miscarriage was a pretty important event.
Afterwards, Ms Trunk told CNN: “It got people talking about the taboos of miscarriage and unwanted pregnancy. I have no regrets. I actually thought that having a miscarriage at work was no big shakes. It seems everyone in the world would prefer a miscarriage over an abortion - even the Pope. It’s no different to me saying what I had for lunch.” She added: “ I’m not really sure why people are offended. To those who don’t want to know, what would I say? Don’t log on.”
While some people were disgusted, others believe she has a point.
The delivery may have been inappropriate, but she certainly raised an important issue. Many women are too afraid to say they have had a miscarriage, and instead make up a reason to take time off work. Issues might not be so off-limits as they once were, with the help of social networking sites and the internet.
Had this occurred a few years ago, Penelope Trunk and hundreds of thousands of others would not have had the opportunity to share such personal details.
People in the limelight were the only ones who could cross the line - and even then were extremely censored by the media. Now, you can divulge your dirty little secrets any time, anywhere, as much as you like. So, is the risk of revealing gory details to hackers, stalkers and people worth it? To tweet or not to tweet? That is the question.