The Curse of Social Networking

If you are browsing the web and read this, chances are you also have an account with one or more of Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, Yahoo 360, etc. These services are the rage of late among people connected by the world wide web. The idea is simple. If you are my friend, you can see who else is my friend, and who are the friends of my other friends, and so on. All of them also add various other stuff such as publicly viewable message boards, ways to share pictures, indicators of status (location, whether single or seeing someone, etc), reviews of movies, and the like.

While I will have to give these services their due credit in helping me find a handful of people I had not seen in years and to remind me of a few birthdays, I think their disadvantages outweigh their benefits:

1. Somehow the very idea of putting up a list of people you are friends with is something unnatural to me. I always have kept and try to keep my contact circles disjoint (mutually exclusive, but I like the mathematical term). I am not comfortable with the fact that I may have created platforms where different people who know different secrets about me are listed together.

2. Your very presence on these networks can lead to pressure to be listed as someone else's contact, so as not to give the impression that you do not get along. As a result, you may have to be connected with people you couldn't care less about, but had to add out of courtesy.

3. Did I mention that all the services I'm talking about offer the ability to form associations or groups? There are all kinds of groups ranging from alumni associations of schools and universities to, sadly, racially supremacist groups. So far the ones I've come across have been to do with the racist system of castes in the Hindu religion. I have a policy of not publicly acknowledging my association with anyone who's in those.

4. But the potentially most dangerous aspect of social networking services is the loss of privacy because of the publicly viewable messaging features. The vast majority of Indians I know have begun using these instead of e-mail, for communication. I admit, I am not equally open with all people I know and get annoyed whenever anyone mentions something which I would not talk about in the presence of other known folks.

Elaborating a little on the last point, you have no idea how people foolishly give away information on these sites. It takes a little browsing back and forth (stalking?) between message boards to find out a lot of details. Some of the information I have gathered from periodic profile visits has been to do with travel plans including flight details, job frustrations, rendezvous both group and 'dates', and a lot, lot more. (I use this means of data gathering only if the people do not respond to a direct query). However, I have policies that my friends are aware of, on what can and cannot be discussed publicly.

All this having been said, the only reason I am still on these services is so that occasionally a long lost friend can re-establish contact and so that I can draw some entertainment from the information people are imprudent enough to put out.