Ignoring Societal Expectations of Behavior While Social Networking

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The Internet has allowed and explosion of communication and self-expression in today's society. It is also the medium of choice for social networking. This latest trend is becoming a cause for concern, however, as many Internet users do not apply the societal expectations of behavior to their online postings of photos and videos, written communication, or self-representation.

Online social networking is becoming increasingly popular. Researchers note that the use of the Internet for communication purposes supercedes music and film downloading (quoted by Shklovski, Kiesler, and Kraut, 251). According to a tracking survey conducted from April 8, 2013 to May 11, 2013 by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 78% of adults use the Internet (Fallows, 5). A study by the same group found that nearly the same percentage held true for twelve to seventeen-year-old American youth during the fall of 2012 (quoted by Greenfield, et. al, 186).

The use of social networking websites is staggering. The widely popular Facebook.com began in 2004 as a way to connect

students at Harvard University (Stone). The website now boasts “more than one billion active users” who collectively upload over “950 million photos … and 11 million videos to the site each month” (Facebook.com).

Before examining a lack of ethics, it is important to first develop a full understanding of social interactions and networking and then apply these to the realms of the Internet. According to one French analysis, social networking can be described as “a social system constructed by a collection of actors, relations among these actors (e.g., friendship, knowledge exchange), and possible attributes (e.g., age, sex) for each actor” (Assimakopoulos and Yan,...

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...icating Information Technology.

Ed. Robert Kraut, Malcolm Brynin, Sara Kiesler. Cary, NC: Oxford

University Press, Incorporated, 2006. 251-264. 5 November 2008.

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2008. facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org>. Wiszniewski, Dorian and Richard Coyne. “Mask and Identity: The Hermeneutics

of Self-Construction in the Information Age.” Building Virtual Communities:

Learning and Change in Cyberspace. New York: Cambridge

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