David DiSalvo, freelance writer for Scientific American Mind, stated the following in his Jan./Feb.

2010 article titled "Are Social Networks Messing with Your Head?," published in Scientific
American Mind:
"These days people toss around the term 'addiction' as casually as they would a Frisbee. But
whatever you call an unhealthy attachment, people are spending ever more time on social
networks, and some are getting into trouble over it. For context, Nielson Online reports that the
70 million Facebook members in the US spent 233 million hours on the site in April 2009, up
from 28 million hours by 23 million members the previous April -- a 175 percent increase in per
capita usage. And according to a study by Nucleus Research in Boston, the most avid users are
spending two hours a day on the site while they are at work -- helping to cost companies whose
employees can access Facebook 1.5 percent of total office productivity...
Most people will not imperil their psyches if they spend a little more time on social-networking
sites. For them, two hours a day on Facebook may simply mean two hours less in front of the
TV. But for people who bring a compulsive personality to the keyboard, those hours can grow
rapidly, setting off a cascade of bad consequences at home and work... In the US, the group at
risk is pretty big: one in 50 adults has some degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder."
Jan./Feb. 2010 - David DiSalvo

Are Social Networking Sites Good for Our

Society?
PRO (yes)

CON (no)

Nicole Ellison, PhD, Assistant Professor of

Telecommunication, Information Studies, and
Media at Michigan State University, stated the
following in a Feb. 15, 2008 entry titled "Is
MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics
Quorum," from the Freakonomics blog hosted
by the New York Times:
"I believe the benefits provided by social
network sites such as Facebook have made us
better off as a society and as individuals, and
that, as they continue to be adopted by more
diverse populations, we will see an increase in
their utility. Anecdotal evidence of positive
outcomes from these technologies -- such as
political activities organized via Facebook or
jobs found through LinkedIn -- is well-known,
but now a growing corpus of academic
research on social networks sites supports this
view as well...

Tom Hodgkinson, writer for the Guardian,

stated the following in his Jan. 14, 2008 article
titled "With Friends Like These...," published in
the Guardian:
"I despise Facebook. This enormously
successful American business describes itself
as 'a social utility that connects you with the
people around you'. But hang on. Why on
God's earth would I need a computer to
connect with the people around me? Why
should my relationships be mediated through
the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in
California? What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people?

Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of
doing something enjoyable such as talking and
eating and dancing and drinking with my
friends, I am merely sending them little
ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in
Social technologies never have predictable and cyberspace, while chained to my desk?...
absolute positive or negative effects, which is

why social scientists dread questions like

these. In considering the effects of social
network sites, it is clear that there are many
challenges to work through -- the increasing
commercialization of this space, the need to
construct strong privacy protections for users,
and safety issues -- but I believe the benefits
we receive as a society provided by these tools
far outweigh the risks."

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist

experiment: can you make money out of
friendship? Can you create communities free of
national boundaries -- and then sell Coca-Cola
to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It
makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in
relationships that were happening anyway."
Jan. 14, 2008 - Tom Hodgkinson

Feb. 15, 2008 - Nicole Ellison, PhD

Brendesha M. Tynes, PhD, Assistant Professor

of Educational Psychology at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, stated the
following in her Nov. 2007 article titled "Internet
Safety Gone Wild?," published in the Journal of
Adolescent Research:
"Online social networking can facilitate identity
exploration, provide social cognitive skills such
as perspective taking, and fulfill the need for
social support, intimacy, and autonomy.
Whether constructing their profiles in MySpace,
creating a video and posting it on YouTube, or
talking in chat rooms, teens are constantly
creating, recreating, and honing their identities
-- a primary goal of adolescent development.
This requires constant reflection on who they
are, on who they want to become, and on their
values,
strengths,
and
weaknesses.
As teens prepare to enter the adult social
world, online social environments provide
training wheels, allowing young people to
practice interaction with others in the safety of
their homes."
Nov. 2007 - Brendesha M. Tynes, PhD

Christine
Greenhow,
EdD,
Educational
Researcher and Research Fellow at the
Institute for Advanced Studies at the University
of Minnesota, stated the following about her
research in a July 10, 2008 news release titled
"Educational Benefits of Social Networking
Sites," posted on the University of Minnesota
website:
"What we found was that students using social
networking sites are actually practicing the
kinds of 21st century skills we want them to
develop to be successful today. Students are
developing a positive attitude towards using
technology systems, editing and customizing
content and thinking about online design and

Susan Greenfield, DPhil, Professor of

Pharmacology at the University of Oxford,
stated the following in her Feb. 12, 2009
speech to the UK House of Lords:
"Social networking sites might tap into the
basic brain systems for delivering pleasurable
experience. However, these experiences are
devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term
significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st
century mind might almost be infantilised,
characterised by short attention spans,
sensationalism, inability to empathise and a
shaky sense of identity."
Feb. 12, 2009 - Susan Greenfield, DPhil

Himanshu
Tyagi,
MRCPsych,
MBBS,
Specialist Registrar in Psychotherapy at the
Springfield University Hospital in London, UK,
stated the following in an address to the
Annual Meeting of the Royal College of
Psychiatrists, as quoted in a July 3, 2008 press
release
from
the
Royal
College
of
Psychiatrists:
"It's a world where everything moves fast and
changes all the time, where relationships are
quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where
you can delete your profile if you don't like it
and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink
of an eye for one that is more acceptable.
People used to the quick pace of online social
networking may soon find the real world boring
and unstimulating, potentially leading to more
extreme behaviour to get that sense.
It may be possible that young people who have
no experience of a world without online
societies put less value on their real world
identities and can therefore be at risk in their
real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to
impulsive behaviour or even suicide."

layout. They're also sharing creative original

work like poetry and film and practicing safe
and responsible use of information and
technology. The Web sites offer tremendous
educational potential."
July 10, 2008 - Christine Greenhow, EdD

Michael Marshall, MSc, Writer and Online

Editorial Assistant for the New Scientist, stated
the following in his Mar. 6, 2009 article titled
"Why Facebook Is Good for You," published in
theNew Scientist:
"Using the internet and 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
socialising, such as those with Asperger's
syndrome, experience great benefits. As for
social networking sites being a poor alternative
to real-world socialising, surveys reported at a
conference in 2006 indicate that Facebook
users mostly use it to maintain relationships
with people they meet offline."
Mar. 6, 2009 - Michael Marshall, MSc

The National School Boards Association

(NSBA) stated the following in their July 2007
study titled "Creating & Connecting: Research
and Guidelines on Online Social - and
Educational - Networking," posted on nsba.org:
"Almost 60 percent of students who use social
networking talk about education topics online
and, surprisingly, more than 50 percent talk
specifically
about
schoolwork...
With words, music, photos and videos,
students are expressing themselves by
creating, manipulating and sharing content
online...
Only a minority of students has had any kind of
negative experience with social networking in
the last three months; even fewer parents
report that their children have had a negative
experience over a longer, six-month period."
July 2007 - National School Boards Association (NSBA)

July 3, 2008 - Himanshu Tyagi, MRCPsych, MBBS

Sophos, a company that develops and sells

computer security programs, stated the
following in its Feb. 1, 2010 white paper titled
"Security Threat Report: 2010," posted on
sophos.com:
"Although productivity continues to be the
dominant reason for companies to block social
networks (a third of companies say this is the
reason they block Facebook), there has been a
dramatic rise since April 2009 in the number of
businesses who believe malware [malicious
software] is their primary security concern with
such sites.
It seems these malware concerns are well
justified, with a 70% rise in the proportion of
firms that report encountering spam and
malware attacks via social networks during
2009. More than half of all companies
surveyed said they had received spam via
social networking sites, and over a third said
they had received malware.
Furthermore, over 72% of firms believe that
employees' behavior on social networking sites
could endanger their business's security. This
has increased from 66% in the previous study."
Feb. 1, 2010 - Sophos

Michael Bugeja, PhD, Director of the Greenlee

School of Journalism and Communication at
Iowa State University, stated the following in an
online debate on social networking conducted
Jan. 15-25, 2008 and sponsored by The
Economist:
"Facebook or MySpace are programmed for
revenue generation, especially the vending of
marketing data and the advertising base that
can be established because of that data. To do
so, those networks rely on technology
developed by military (to surveil) and industry
(to sell). The fact that both happen
simultaneously is no fluke because the
programming
is
designed
to
amass
psychographics on users too busy depicting
each other like products to notice the
surveillance...

To rebut examples of proactive use of social

networks, I could counter with tragic ones,
Ben Parr, Co-Editor of Mashable, stated the including a recent hoax by an adult 'neighbour'

following in his Jan. 20, 2010 article titled

"Social Media's True Impact on Haiti, China,
and the World," posted on Mashable.com:
"With the Iranian government clamping down
on
information
and
enforcing
censorship [during protests of the Iranian
presidential election in June 2009], Twitter,
Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube became the
primary mediums for bringing information out of
the conflicted nation and spreading notes
between dissidents... Twitter's role was so
important in fact that the US government got
involved in scheduling Twitter's downtime...

that triggered the suicide of 13-year-old Megan

Meier."
Jan. 15-25, 2008 - Michael Bugeja, PhD

Christopher Wolf, JD, former Chair of the

International Network Against Cyber-Hate
(INACH), stated the following in his opening
remarks at the Nov. 8, 2007 Berlin meeting of
INACH:
"On MySpace, as well as on the social
networking site Facebook.com, there are
After a magnitude 7.0 earthquake (and multiple
hundreds of groups featuring the words 'Hitler'
aftershocks) devastated the nation of Haiti [on
or 'Nazi,' many established to promote neoJan. 12, 2010], social media became the
Nazism and other anti-Semitic feelings...
medium in which everybody spread the word.
Dramatic Haiti earthquake Twitter pictures
swept across the web, while tech giants In the Internet era, it appears there are more
mobilized. The most impressive part of social people interested in spewing hate than in
media's impact on Haiti has to be the charity countering it. On the social networking sites
text message campaign that has already raised and on YouTube, inflammatory, hate-filled
more than $10 million for Haiti victim relief. content overwhelms the limited efforts to
Social media spread the word, technology promote tolerance and to teach diversity. And,
as we have seen, hate speech inspires
made it possible...
violence."
Real-time communication platforms like Twitter
and Facebook have spread the word about
what's happening within these nations, long
before the mainstream media prints the story.
These tools have also created a level
awareness we've never seen before."
Jan. 20, 2010 - Ben Parr

Nov. 8, 2007 - Christopher Wolf, JD