New Media & Community - g42

Researchers have studied adolescents’ new media use, particularly that of the internet, cell phones, text messaging, and online gaming, often finding patterns of similarity across the use of these new media among adolescents. Both Ling and Yttri and Ito and Okabe studied mobile telephony, including text messaging, of adolescents in two different countries, Japan and Norway, and found a few similar relationships between the media use of adolescent members of each of these two societies. Both articles found very high adoption rates of the mobile phone medium among adolescents, stating that young people use their phones more and spend a greater amount of time on them as compared to other age groups. Also, both articles discuss power structures between teens and parents, which they determined was impacted by cell phone use. Ling and Yttri found that adolescents’ mobile phones can draw attention away from family gatherings, rituals and interactions, allowing teens to have contact with their friends during times that were exclusively family time in the past, such as evening meals or vacations. However, mobile phones were also used as a method that parents used to control their children, as parents were able to monitor their activities, acting as a “direct channel to the child regardless of time or place”. Similarly, Ito and Okabe also discuss the regulation and control that adolescents are subjected to by their parents, typically as a result of their financial dependence and restriction of access to a full set of adult rights and resources. The authors state that adolescents’ communication is regulated by adults (as well as peers) by the place and time of day, and that “access to mobile media takes a central role in managing and inflecting that control”. Ito and Okabe even acknowledge Ling and Yttri’s research saying that the cross-cultural similarities in cell phone use of teens is in part an “outcome of the similarities in the institutionalized status of youth”.

Ling and Yttri’s study also discusses the impact of mobile phone use on social interaction among peers, which is similar in theme to Ling et al’s 1997 and 2002 studies that also discussed the use of mobile phone use in social situations, particularly those within the public realm. Similarly, a parallel can also be drawn between Ling et al’s 1997 and 2002 studies and Ito and Okabe’s paper in that both discuss the situations in which mobile phones are appropriate for use and instances in which use is considered inappropriate.

However, there are also limitations in both articles. Ito and Okabe’s article is limited in the fact that it only examines the adolescents of Japan. Similarly, the majority of these adolescents were from the Tokyo Kanto region, which prevents generalizability to other countries due to the differences between inhabitants of different nations and also limits generalizability across Japan because the sample is not representative of the country as a whole. Also, the sample for this study was extremely small, with only 24 people interviewed total, which also introduces bias into the research because the sample may be too small to be generalized to the larger population. Ling and Yttri’s method includes somewhat less flaws, due to its larger sample and its use of nationally representative sample surveying from 9 different European countries as its quantitative research. However, adolescents from countries outside Europe are not included within in the study’s sample, preventing generalizability to a large portion of the world. Also, this study has another limitation in that some of its statements are not supported with empirical data and are not cited, as exemplified by its discussion of the statement that some peers are more influential in their peer groups, such as those who are good at telling jokes or singing (p. 228).

The other two articles, by Mesch and Talmud and by Farrell, discuss the new media of the Internet and online gaming respectively and their impact upon adolescents. Mesch and Talmud’s article primarily focuses upon the strength, intimacy and closeness of adolescent social relationships and the origin of these social ties. These authors found that teens perceived themselves to be less close with online friends than face-to-face friends and that online ties seem to be weaker than face-to-face ties among adolescents. This was due to the lesser content and activity multiplexity of online relationship, as online ties were typically restricted to nonpersonal topics and not everyday activities. This finding correlates with Hampton et al’s 2003 study, which found that being wired (use of the internet and neighborhood email lists) fostered weak tie formation, and did not lead to much, if any, strong tie formation. Hampton’s forthcoming study also found that only one study participant indicated that they had made a “close” friend as a result of the new e-neighbors service, whereas the majority of new ties made were weak. However, Mesch and Talmud’s study is limited in its generalizability because its sample only contained adolescents who lived in Israel, and thus these findings are not generalizable to other countries because of the differences which exist between Israeli adolescents and those of other nationalities. The study is comprised of a random, representative sample of Israeli teenagers, which is a strength of the study, as it is generalizable to Israeli adolescents as a whole. Also, the range of options presented for topics discussed and activities participated in with friends were not altogether comprehensive, as many teens may talk about and do other activities with their friends than those listed on the surveys, so this may be a source of bias because important discussion topics and activities may be left out.

Farrell’s article about online gaming provides a fascinating portrayal of online addiction that affects some adolescents. This article supplies examples that help to illustrate the manifestation and effects of internet addiction, which are described in Wieland’s article. Farrell discusses cases of internet addiction that exemplify many of the Wieland’s stipulations for internet addiction and the criteria of Young’s Internet Addiction test, as cited in Wieland’s article. Wieland’s paper states that symptoms of internet use include social isolation and academic failure, both of which are illustrated by Farrell’s article. Farrell describes a male college student whose friends drifted away and grades dropped due to excessive World of Warcraft use, and another student whose GPA fell from a 3.6 to a 0.2. However, this article does not provide any original research to support its claims. It does provide some empirical data to support its claims, but the majority of assertions are merely supported by quotations from student abusers and school administrators, and it is lacking in quantitative data that assesses the amount of students internet addiction afflicts and other facts that it asserts. For example, the article states that “gambling and online-game sites attract many more men than women, but female students are just as inclined as males” to send a great amount of time on the internet. However, Farrell does not support this statement, and many others, with any empirical data or figures, presenting a limitation to her work.

Questions:

What other activities and topics of conversation could Mesch and Talmud have added to their list to make their list more comprehensive?

Does Farrell only cite extreme examples of internet abuse or are these cases more common among university students than one would typically think?

The advent of online social networking sites has provided benefits to society, yet these sites also present dangers that could potentially harm unwitting users. Social networking sites spur users to reveal information about themselves, creating profiles of facts about users’ interests, hobbies, friends and contact information. The information on these sites can foster development and maintenance of social ties due to the ability that they give users to connect with others based on commonalities, and they allow people to keep up with each others’ lives and provide an easy means of contact. However, personal information that users publish on these sites raises great privacy concerns, as the information could be used by predators to stalk individuals or steal their identities. Ellison et al’s article discusses both of these issues during their investigation into the role of Facebook in students’ lives. These authors found that Facebook was primarily used to maintain and potentially strengthen existing social ties created offline, which then migrated online. They discovered that one of the major uses of Facebook was to keep in touch with old friends and to maintain or deepen ties that were fostered by an offline connection, like shared class or proximity. These findings contrast with the relationships among users of earlier virtual communities, such as those described by Rheingold, in which bonds between members were first created online and then moved offline after a connection had been established. Similarly, the students used Facebook much less for meeting new people than for maintaining existing ties, which also goes against many of the assertions of authors who wrote about uses of the internet earlier in its history, like Rheingold and Singer, who both focused upon the internet and virtual communities’ ability to connect previously unacquainted, geographically dispersed people based on shared interest. In contrast, Facebook use, according to Ellison et al, is more about maintenance of existing social ties and is much more geographically-based, as members of students’ primary network are those who attend their same university. These authors also discuss the concept of social capital, as notably discussed by Putnam, finding strong connections between Facebook intensity and bridging, bonding, and high school social capital. High school social capital, an invention of the researchers, was particularly interesting in that Facebook was shown to maintain this form of social capital, as the site allowed users to sustain weak ties among old high school friends, providing low-effort ways to keep up with old acquaintances. However, one key limitation to this study is that causality between Facebook use and the maintenance of social capital cannot be proven due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, providing a bias to these results. Similarly, this study only surveyed the Facebook users of one school, Michigan State University, which presents a bias in that the study is not generalizable to other student populations. Similarly, 91% of these students were from Michigan, providing another source of bias, as residents of Michigan, or perhaps from the Midwest in general, may differ in social capital and in their use of Facebook from students from other states or regions of the country.

Verini also examines social ties and online social networking sites in his description of MySpace. However, in contrast with the findings of Ellison et al, Verini states that many MySpace users form new relationships online, and often only know these new acquaintances online. However, some users, such as Jeremy Jackson, do continue these new online relationship offline, meeting in person later and, in Jeremy’s case, even pursuing sexual relationships with them, utilizing MySpace as a dating site. Verini’s portrayal of social networking sites also differs from Gross and Acquisti’s, in that Verini describes the tendency of MySpace users to create falsified online personas, often creating fictitious alter egos or pretending to be someone famous. In comparison, only 8% of Facebook users used fake names in their profiles. This discussion illuminates a limitation of Verini’s article, as he rarely utilizes empirical data to back up his assertions. Verini does not attempt to discern the percentage of fictitious MySpace profiles, he instead merely states that they exist. His article, though admittedly published in Vanity Fair not a scholarly journal, would be strengthened if he employed more quantitative evidence to support his claims. Verini also discusses interest and affiliation-based groups that are prevalent on MySpace, which somewhat connects it to the common interest groups found in earlier virtual communities, such as WELL, which Rheingold described. The article also brings up some privacy issues, such as the accessibility of personal information on MySpace and about NewsCorp’s potential uses of MySpace profiles as a source of market research, but privacy concerns have a more tangential role in this article.

Ellison et al also examine the issue of privacy in relation to Facebook, stating that privacy advocates are wary that students form a false sense of security due to the association of Facebook as a “students only” space, which spurs students to provide personal information that could lead to stalking or identity theft. These concerns are echoed in Gross and Acquisti’s paper, which delves into the privacy concerns of online social networks. Gross and Acquisti discuss the potential for stalking created by Facebook categories, which allows students to list their residence and class schedule, giving predators information about students’ whereabouts. New features added to Facebook since this article was published, mainly the Status feature, could allow for further stalking, as many students now update their status to reveal their where they are or what they are doing at the current moment. The authors also identify less commonly acknowledged risks for attack, such as Re-identification and building a digital dossier. This description of Re-identification is particularly worrisome to me, because I, like presumably many other people, was unaware that predators could combine seemingly innocuous information like birth date, hometown, residence and phone number to estimate social security numbers and commit identity theft. Similarly, their assertion that 30% of users were found to accept an unknown friend request, thus exposing their profiles to unknown others, is also troubling, as many people do this without consideration of the potential consequences. Gross and Acquisti’s findings about the frequency that students change default privacy settings is also concerning, in that the majority of students are lulled into a sense of privacy protection through Facebook’s stipulation that only friends or those in your school (and now city) can view your profile and are thus unconcerned with changing these settings. However, since these findings were only based off of research on students from Carnegie Mellon University, the low percentage of those who alter privacy settings may not be accurate for all populations on Facebook, as members of different schools may be more aware than others of the potential problems with Facebook privacy, presenting a source of bias in these results. At Penn, for instance, students are repeatedly educated that we should not make our personal information available to all, especially during the recruiting process in which employers may judge candidates based on their online information, which has spurred many students to restrict access to their profiles or remove information. This employer viewing of candidates’ online information is further elaborated in Marks’ article. Like Ellison et al, Gross and Acquisti also discuss the possibility of social networking sites to allow students to maintain weak ties easily and cheaply through the technology. This allows for greater networks of weak ties in online networks as opposed to offline social networks, as the threshold to qualify as a friend on someone’s online network is low.

Marks’ article about the Pentagon and social networking sites also brings up alarming privacy concerns of which most users are probably unaware. Marks discusses a linkage of information somewhat similar to that of Gross and Acquisti’s re-identification concept, in that the Pentagon could soon use advances in technology to combine data from social network sites with other personal information such as retail, banking and property records to create comprehensive profiles of users. This is similar to the re-identification concept, in which Gross and Acquisti indicate the potential for linkage between social network site information and medical information or voter registration information. Yet Marks’ linkage differs from re-identification in that re-identification only deals with the linkage of information without explicit identifiers to data with explicit identifiers. The article also asserts that social networking site information could be combined with phone logs, purchases or where people go, obtained from cell phone records. Though the article does present a plethora of ideas about how the government could breach privacy, a limitation of the article is that many of its statements appear to be mostly speculative, as such technologies that would enable information combination are not yet available, so Marks cannot truly be certain that his hypotheses could really occur in coming years. He also does not provide much empirical support for his statements, such as where he discerned these possible privacy breaches from and what data he has to support his theories.

Questions:

How can Facebook educate users about the need to alter privacy settings?

Should MySpace further monitor pictures of its users rather than the loose description in the Vanity Fair article?

The advent of new technologies and their increasing complexity have altered the methods for surveillance available in our society. New media, particularly the internet and cell phone, have played a great role in increasing the means for surveillance that the government, corporations, institutions, parents, employers, and even peers can utilize to monitor people’s behavior, whereabouts, and provide other personal information. Curry et al discuss the founding of the Emergency Response System in the US and the changes that the system has undergone with the burgeoning of new technologies. The emergence of wireless telephones affected the Emergency Response System drastically, as the system had to adapt to this new medium and include a means for discerning the location from which a cell phone call had been placed in order to provide emergency assistance, which is accomplished using the location of the cell base station. This development brought up great privacy concerns, as improper use of this information could be used to track and monitor peoples’ movements and whereabouts and other unacceptable purposes, which the authors denote as function creep. This notion is somewhat similar to Marks’ discussion about how the NSA could combine cell phone records obtained from the location of the base station receiving the call with other information, like social networking details, to gain more comprehensive data on individuals. Curry et al also discuss this similar use by mobile marketing systems, in which individuals’ locations could be mapped and combined with past behavior and demographics, demonstrating how information can be utilized and combined from different sources. However, a limitation of Curry et al’s article is that many of their propositions for the use of cell phone location determination are more speculative and are not yet realized, so many of their concerns may not truly be relevant. Curry et al also does not provide much or any empirical evidence to back up their assertions of future usage of such information, which provides a further limitation to the article.

Lyon’s article also discusses the potential for the combination of different forms of data through surveillance. Comparatively, Lyon is more concerned with the possibility that visual surveillance images, such as photographs and video taken from CCTV in shopping malls or department stores, can be “checked, stored, and compared” with other forms of personal data, allowing digital tabs to be kept on people. However, Lyon also views surveillance as a way to minimize risks and encourage maximum visibility, thereby promoting public safety rather than as potential violations of privacy as discussed by other authors. Zetter also talks about these means of visual surveillance, describing how privacy conference members sought to surveil the surveillers, taking pictures of cameras that were recording them in an attempt to determine how they would respond to being monitored. This article presents a negative view of video surveillance, as those involved in the surveilling activity felt that these organizations were keeping records of their actions and viewed these cameras as “offensive eyes”. This outlook is differing from some of Lyon’s sentiments in which he views such surveillance mechanisms as functioning to minimize risks and enhance safety. However, Zetter’s article does not present any empirical data about how surveillers react to being surveilled and instead merely discusses the reactions of a few people in this one specific test instance. The impact of surveillance reversal would be better determined if a more scientific study was carried out, utilizing empirical evidence.

The paper by Green also investigates surveillance in our modern society. Instead of primarily focusing on how the government and organizations use surveillance, as Lyon and Curry et al did, Green also delves into the surveillance and monitoring that takes place among peers, employers, and between parents and teenagers. She discusses how cell phones are increasingly used by parents to monitor their child’s whereabouts and activities and are used for emergencies and safety concerns. Green’s argument much relates to the studies by Ling and Yttri and by Ito and Okabe, both of which investigate this method of surveillance that parents utilize over their children. Green’s piece brings up many similar concepts to those discussed by these other two papers. Both Green and Ito and Okabe talk about the impact of cell phones on teenagers’ home lives; both studies discuss how teenagers prefer to use their cell phones in their bedrooms instead of the family’s landline to protect the privacy of their conversations and avoid the surveillance of their family members. Similarly, Green discusses the “parental management strategies” that teens often use to regulate their parents’ surveillance of them, such as saying that the battery ran out. Ling and Yttri delve into this concept, creating a parallel between the two works, as their paper discusses specific strategies that teens use to prevent parental regulation such as sending calls from their parents straight to voicemail. Green discusses how teenagers and parents idea about surveillance differ, in that parents define checking up on their kids via cell phone as concern for safety, while teens view it as “surveillance of their activities”.

Holson’s New York Times article about Disney mobile describes a further means of parental control over children, as this new cell phone technology allows parents to restrict their kids’ cell phone use and even track them using GPS technology built into the phones. This extreme form of surveillance gives parents unrestricted access to their children’s whereabouts and allows them to subvert parental management strategies discussed by Green and Ito and Okabe. This service also allows parents to restrict use during certain times, such as during dinnertime, which Ling and Yttri stated as one of the drawbacks of teenagers’ mobile telephony use, as cell phones allowed teens to have contact with their friends during traditional family times. Disney mobile would allow parents to further regulate cell phone use so that children’s attention could not be taken away from the family. However, this article does not much discuss potential downsides of this technology; it merely states that there could be additional uses for this technology, yet the author does not delve further into this implication of the technology, providing a limitation to the study.

Questions:

How else could the Disney Mobile technology be used and what would the drawbacks of these uses be?

Should more specific laws be enacted blocking combination of information from cell phone records with other forms of personal data collected by marketers or other corporations?

The advent of social networking websites in our contemporary society have allowed people to connect with each other and keep up with old friends in novel and efficient ways, yet these sites are plagued with privacy concerns due to the amount and detail of data that users are willing to publish about themselves on this very public medium. These social networks often lure users into a false sense of safety and privacy, making users vulnerable to predators, information harvesting, and even prosecution or expulsion based on the amount and nature of information revealed on these sites. The social networking site Facebook provides users with these feelings of security, as profiles are hidden from other users not listed within the same networks. However, there are many ways to penetrate this barrier, which, according to Ellison et al, creates “a schism between Facebook users’ imagined audience and the actual audience”, putting Facebook users at risk for attacks . There are many privacy concerns associated with Facebook, of which many students are unaware, as evidenced by the great number of instances in which students have gotten in trouble with law enforcement, campus authorities, coaches, the Secret Service, and even have been rejected from jobs and perhaps colleges because of the nature of verbal information and pictures that people have voluntarily posted on Facebook. Also, Facebook users are at risk for violations of their information by hackers and media conglomerates, which can utilize users’ information to commit identity theft and data invasion or for marketing purposes, respectively. According to “Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook” by Gross and Acquisti, 33% of students surveyed believed that it is “either impossible or quite difficult for individuals not affiliated with a university to access the [Facebook] network of that university” . This belief is largely incorrect, as all those individuals and organizations cited above have been able to gain access to university networks. One would only need to “obtain even temporary control of an institution’s single email address” to be able to access a university network, as stated by Gross and Acquisti’s study, “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks” .

One of the main problems with Facebook is the great disregard for control of personal information that the majority of Facebook users exhibit, as evidenced by Gross and Acquisti’s 2005 study. Facebook users have a plethora of tools available to them to protect their privacy, as users can restrict the accessibility of their profiles using a variety of means, particularly by restricting full profile viewing to their Facebook “friends” or friends of friends. Users are also able to control whether they can be searched for, who can see their pictures, what types of people (undergraduates, grad students, faculty etc.) can view their profile, and a host of other privacy controls; however, as found by Gross and Acquisti, the vast majority of users do not alter these privacy controls. These authors found that only 1.2% of users altered their profile searchability and only .06% of profiles examined were unaccessible to an unconnected user . Similarly, an article in Newsweek by Brad Stone asserts that only 17% of users ever change any of the privacy settings away from the default that Facebook has set , which corroborates Gross and Acquisti’s findings, demonstrating the primarily oblivious or unconcerned attitudes that the majority of users have about Facebook privacy.

Through examining media reports, many examples of privacy violations can be found, in which individuals and organizations have used the information or pictures displayed on Facebook profiles as basis for disciplinary action, rejection or investigation. One frequently reported occurrence is the utilization of Facebook data and other published online information by employers to gain more comprehensive views of job candidates or current employees, as cited by Marks’ article for Newscientist.com . The director of career services at Penn State University said that employers often search candidates’ MySpace or Facebook pages to gain a fuller view of applicants’ interpersonal skills, integrity and character . Similarly, 30 recruiters at NYU told career counselors that they scanned social networking sites, searching for “red flags” about applicants’ lifestyle that may go against the values of the corporation . Many specific instances of these practices have been documented in the media. Vermont Technical College reported that a 19-year-old student had been rejected from an internship because executives had scanned the student’s Facebook page and found a picture of the student holding a bottle of vodka. The company stated that the student had been denied due to his bad judgment in the posting of the picture and also because he was breaking the law . Similarly, another student was rejected from a consulting firm because the company found pictures and text detailing the student’s smoking and drinking habits on Facebook . These such examples represent a great privacy concern with Facebook, as information that students unwittingly believe to be only viewed by friends falls into the hand of employers, who easily can gain access to university networks via current interns or other connections. Facebook users should be wary about these possible privacy invasions and realize that their networks are not as secure as they view them to be.

Law enforcement officials and university authorities have also been documented in the media as employing Facebook and other social networking sites as ways to spot illegal activity and to build a case about users from pictures or verbal descriptions on these sites . One notable example of this use of Facebook information is when Penn State campus police utilized photo tags in a Facebook group to identify and prosecute people who rushed the field after a football game, with group membership acting as “laundry lists of suspects” for illegal activity . Similarly, students at Emory were cited for underage drinking after photos that they had posted to a group that they created called “Dobbs 2nd Floor Alcoholics” were spotted by a dorm advisor . Northern Kentucky University students were disciplined for underage drinking as well after administrators viewed Facebook pictures . Also, coaches have begun utilizing information on their players’ Facebook profiles to enact discipline or uphold team policies. Two swimmers at Louisiana State were kicked off the team after they posted negative remarks about their coach, and UC Berkley threatened to suspend athletes after finding photos on Facebook showing that team members had broken team alcohol policies . Michigan’s athletic director even monitored the Facebook profiles of all 800 university athletes, searching for offending comments and photos . In a more extreme example, a student from Fisher College was expelled after he created a Facebook group about a disliked campus guard, stating that the guard needed to be “eliminated”, which school officials deemed as threatening . This information, spurred by a single poor word choice, was used by the college to expel the student, changing the path of his life dramatically. All of these instances represent privacy concerns that users should be wary of.

Also, some universities are utilizing information from Facebook in other ways, providing another privacy concern of the medium. Some colleges and graduate schools are now viewing applicants’ pages on Facebook and other social networking sites when choosing candidates to admit . Others, such as Brandeis University administrators, according to a Boston Goble article, have started reading Facebook pages when determining which candidates to hire for campus positions . Also, a North Carolina college professor has admitted to viewing Facebook profiles to decide which students to allow enrollment into his class . These examples demonstrate the various uses of information posted on Facebook sites by outsiders that can truly impact a student’s college admittance and life.

Perhaps the most astonishing and serious breach of Facebook information is the case in which a University of Oklahoma student was investigated by the Secret Service after posting a comment on the “Bush sucks” group on Facebook. This student wrote, “We could all donate a dollar and raise millions of dollars to hire an assassin to kill the president and replace him with a monkey.” Though this is extremely poor judgment, it seems quite apparent that this was not a serious threat. It is astonishing that the Secret Service has utilized Facebook information as grounds to begin an investigation on a student, demonstrating the use and monitoring of Facebook information by the government, which is a great privacy concern for users of the site .

Also, Facebook information has been used by media outlets to build evidence for their stories. A New York Times reporter was writing a story about recreational Adderall use, and went on Facebook to conduct his research, finding a Columbia group called “Adderall, You’re Breaking My Heart” and contacted all members listed for his story. This reporter’s utilization of Facebook information could have further exposed this illegal drug usage to campus or law enforcement officials, representing another privacy concern via media use of Facebook information .

Facebook’s financing and partnerships also provide potential privacy concerns for Facebook users. This summer, Interpublic Group, a holding company that owns many advertising agencies and marketing companies, bought a .5 percent share in Facebook, and has committed to spend 10 million dollars on advertising for its clients on the site. Though Interpublic’s percentage share of Facebook is tiny, Interpublic will be given opportunities for “mining Facebook for market research trends among its young user base” , giving Interpublic access to Facebook’s consumer data . This ownership will allow Interpublic to utilize users’ information for its marketing practices, demonstrating a great breach of user privacy. Interpublic could then potentially combine this information with other databases that it has of consumers purchase habits or financial transaction data, as indicated by Marks’s article, to gain a more comprehensive picture of individuals . As someone who worked for a firm within the Interpublic Group this summer, I can attest to how valuable such consumer data would be to Interpublic, providing a direct pipeline into the coveted Generation Y demographic and revealing their interests, habits and preferences.

Many Facebook users are quite oblivious to the fact that outsiders can easily access information posted on Facebook that users thought to be private, which is demonstrated by the above cases in which information revealed by Facebook users has been employed by others for harm or punishment against the users. As stated by Gross and Acquisti, access to university Facebook networks can be gained by even temporarily obtaining a university address . However, the advent of regional Facebook networks and the recent opening of Facebook to anyone with an email address have presented new ways in which individuals and organizations can access users’ information. The regional network system has made it much easier to view peoples’ full profiles. Many users join regional networks for the city in which they live permanently or in which their college is located. These networks give others unparalleled access to users’ profiles, as all one needs to do is search for the person whose profile they are trying to access to determine if they are in a regional network, and if so, then join that regional network in order to view their profile. Anyone can join any regional network, as a current address or any other location-identifying information is not used to restrict admittance into regional networks. This system makes it easy to view the profile of anyone who is listed within a regional network. By my observations, many people who have graduated college or who joined Facebook after they have graduated are in regional networks. Similarly, regional networks are often the primary networks for those who initially register for Facebook after they have graduated, making it very easy to access the profiles of such users. Therefore, if users do not restrict Facebook privacy settings, people who join a regional network can have their information viewed by anyone else who spends the minute it takes to join the same regional network. Since it has been demonstrated that the majority of users do not alter privacy settings, Facebook users are at a greater risk than ever for privacy attacks with these new Facebook capabilities.

Endnotes

1. Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2006). Spatially Bounded Online Social Networks and Social Capital: The Role of Facebook, Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. Dresden, Germany.
2. Acquisti, A., Gross, R. (2006) Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook. PET 2006. p.18.
3. Gross, R., & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. Paper presented at the ACM Workshop on privacy in the Electronic Society, Alexandria, VA.
4. Gross and Acquisti. (2005).
5. Stone, Brad. (2006, August 27). Web of Risks; Students adore social-networking sites like Facebook, but indiscreet postings can mean really big trouble. Newsweek.
6. Marks, Paul (2006, June 9). Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites. New Scientist.
7. Victor, Daniel. (2006, November 12). Naughty Web pages can damage job prospects. Patriot-News.
8. Finder, Alan. (2006, September 18). Guess Who’s Looking at Your Web Page? Scholastic Update.
9. Stone. (2006).
10. Finder. (2006).
11. Garrett, Ronnie. (2006, November 1). To catch a creep; Come over to MySpace and you’ll solve crimes. Law Enforcement Technology.
12. Perry, Stephanie. (2006, January 25). Can facebook lead to your arrest? The Daily Free Press.
13. Stone. (2006).
14. Perry. (2006).
15. Jadhav, Adam, Graber, Shane. (2006, September 27). Student’s sex story on Web backfires SIUE undergrad may face expulsion after subject of posting goes to authorities. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
16. Gerstner, Joanne. (2006, September 22). Crude Web profiles put heat on athletes; U-M, MSU coaches reprimand team members over content on MySpace, Facebook sites. The Detroit News.
17. Stone. (2006).
18. Finder. (2006).
19. Woo, Stu. (2005, November 3). Schools use Facebook to run background checks on students. Brown Daily Herald.
20. Kharif, Olga. (2006, February 28). Big Brother is Reading Your Blog; These days, social networkers are concerned about protecting their privacy, not only from predators and scam artists, but from nosy employers and campus authorities. BusinessWeek.
21. Hirschland, John. (2006, January 19). Students busted on Facebook. Columbia Daily Spectator.
22. Hirschland. (2006).
23. Morissey, Brian. (2006, June 16). IPG to Partner with Facebook. Adweek.
24. Campaign. (2006, August 4). Close-Up: Live issue – Marcom giants dabble in social networking
25. Marks. (2006).
26. Gross and Acquisti. (2005).

The effect of gaming on users has been a controversial topic discussed both in the media and in academic writing. Positive effects of video games have been stated by some authors, such as by Lee and Peng and by Jenkins who both site the uses of video games in training, particularly by the military. Lee and Peng also delve into other positive outcomes of video game use, which include enhanced spatial skills, cognitive abilities and uses in therapy. However, a great number of writings on video games depict more negative outcomes often associated with gaming, like violence or aggression, addiction, or social isolation. Williams’ study investigates the effects of immersive video game play upon participants, testing their social and civic tendencies before and after exposure. Williams found that the effects of video game use were primarily negative, as both bridging and bonding social capital declined for users. These findings build upon this concept of social capital, particularly its bridging and bonding forms, that were discussed both by Putnam and by Ellison et al; Ellison et al’s paper that illuminated the relationship between Facebook and these types of social capital. However, Ellison found that Facebook facilitated the maintenance of existing social ties, which contrasts with Williams’ findings that game play led to great declines in extended friendship networks, presenting a contrast between the two mediums. Williams also discovered that game play also led to decreases in physical face-to-face interactions with friends, indicating another negative effect. However, William’s research has many limitations, which renders many biases in his research. Firstly, there was no control group in his study, so it is not possible to determine whether the findings truly resulted from the game play or whether they were an outcome of measurement. Also, players were asked to record playing time in time diaries, which often leads to biases because memory is imperfect, causing participants to misreport their game use. Also, the study was quite short, lasting only one month, which could have biased the results. Another limitation is the lack of diversity both in ethnicity (85% White) and gender (84% male), which is a source of bias, as these results cannot be generalized to the larger population. Participants were also solicited by online message boards, which creates another source of bias in that only those who had access to the internet and participated in such message boards were included in the study, which excludes a wide subset of the population. This could create a systematic bias against less wealthy people and those who do not frequent such sites.

Lee and Peng also investigate the relationship between game play and sociability. However, these authors present an alternate viewpoint, citing a number of studies that found that game play does not have a negative impact upon social interaction. These authors state that traditional views about video game players having little social interaction with their peers are not the reality. Lee and Peng cite a study by Colwell et al in which heavy video game users were more likely to meet up with their friends outside of school than non-game players. They also reference a study that found that game playing children actually developed higher sociability than non-game playing children, by Shimai et al. However, a limitation of Lee and Peng’s paper is that though they do cite many examples of empirical research to back up their claims, they do not cite the specifics of many of the studies, such as their method, sample or possible limitations, which does not give readers a full picture of the generalizability of these studies or if there are any sources of bias that might render these findings less valid. Lee and Peng also write about game addiction, referencing an example about the death of a Korean adult who died after 50 hours of continuous game playing. Their discussion relates to the article by Farrell that delves into the addictive potential of video games, illustrating with many examples the harmful effects that intensive video game playing can have.

Vorderer and Chan also explore the effects of video game playing on social interaction, yet these authors focus upon social interaction among users of games like massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Vorderer and Chan state that such expansive online games “capture the notion of the Internet as a location for virtual communities”, referencing Rheingold’s work, in that these games allow people to connect and communicate with each other as did the virtual communities of Rheingold’s time. They describe how MMOGs have features specifically for interaction among players, such as channels that allow for conversations, questions to be posed to the group, and even private chat between members similar to instant messaging. These features can be used to form relationships between users. Vorderer and Chan state that many of these interactions are “out-of-character relationships” in which players communicate as their real selves and often extend this communication to e-mail, phone or even face-to-face meetings. This is also similar to Rheingold’s description of virtual communities, in which users were able to get to know each other online through the virtual community and then choose whether or not to extend the relationship offline in other forms. However, there are a few limitations to Vorderer and Chan’s paper, especially in that they often make claims that are not supported by empirical evidence, instead merely relying on anecdotal evidence or their own sentiments. For example, they state that “the majority of players would choose to play against another person rather than a computer”, yet they do not provide any empirical data to support such assertions.

Both Klug and Schell and Jenkins discuss some of the reasons why people, especially adolescents, play video games. One of the main reasons mentioned by both papers is that people play games to escape from their mundane, everyday world to enter a special, other world that is different from their typical lives. Jenkins states that the pleasure of play often arises from escapism, which is similar to Klug and Schell’s assertion. However, Klug and Schell do not provide much empirical evidence for this assertion, relying mainly on anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, eliciting the uses of video games by people they have interviewed. Similarly, Klug and Schell generalize and stereotype people frequently in their paper, citing stereotypes of a variety of people, like competitive people (Competitors) and even professions, such as engineers, who they say “lack certain social graces”. Also, in video game environments, users can experiment with many things that they cannot do in real life, allowing them to explore fantasies, which is another concept discussed by both papers; Jenkins states that adolescents often play videogames because they can have control over their world and manipulate reality. Jenkins also delves into the impact of media on adolescents, particularly the media’s relationship to and often blame for the actions of the Columbine shooters. They discuss the effects of violence in the media, particularly that in movies, TV shows, and in video games, which are often cited as some of the influencers of the shooters. Jenkins asserts that video games represent stylized portrayals of violence, which affect adolescents less than realistic portrayals of violence do, providing some defense to violent and aggressive video games. Jenkins also elaborates on the role that the internet plays for pariahs like the Columbine shooters; the internet allows such people to find an alternative social support network, and thus reach people who are more like them than those in their own geographic area, which is similar to the writings of Rheingold and Singer. However, Jenkins does not back up many of his assertions with empirical evidence either and does not reference many media studies or provide their specific findings, which is a limitation of this paper. It seems that many of his statements are his own viewpoint and are not supported by hard data or empirical studies.

Ohler and Nieding also explore violence in video games, yet these authors take more of a behavioral approach with relation to play. Their studies investigate what instigates the aggressive attacks that adolescents perform during video game play, finding that the number of aggressive actions adolescents carried out while playing a video game was more influenced by their strength of desire to win and the elaborateness of their strategies used rather than by the amount of violence in a game. They also found that users of computer games employ a broader range of strategies while in playful mode. However, their experiment that achieved these findings have many limitations, particularly in that it only studied 20 adolescents, which is a very small sample size. Also, only adolescent males were studied, which makes these findings unable to be generalized to both sexes and to the larger, age diverse real-world population.

Questions:

How are video games different from social networking sites in their ability to affect social capital?

Are there any hidden dangers behind communication between random users playing MMOGs?