Say NO to online social networks.

Well, I am not sure what you mean by territory in this context but if it refers to crime happening in some specific regions of world then I don't think that's a right argument as far as OSN are concerned. OSN -- by definition -- are "online" social networks and so accessible to anyone from anywhere in the world. The private information posted by some innocent teenager can be equally exploited by any online predator -- may be located in victim's neighborhood or some other part of the country. Now you're saying people are willing to take that risk as the percentage of exploitation is -- in your opinion -- very small. But as I mentioned previously, may be the percentage is small "yet" or even smaller incidents have been well published "so far" -- and it's wrong to overlook it on that basis. Also it's not some tiny issue to just ignore about it! In fact, you too have mentioned about some possible exploitation concerns in R1, which I think are quite serious in nature, ain't they? To be more precise, let me list a few of them here -- http://wjz.com... -------------------------------------------------------- "In New Jersey, Majalie Cajuste is grieving the murder of her daughter Judy. The 14-year-old reportedly told friends she met a man in his 20s through MySpace.com" "Across the country, in Northern California, friends are mourning 15-year-old Kayla Reed. She was active on MySpace until the day she disappeared." http://www.foxnews.com... -------------------------------------------------- "So-called 'social networking' sites, such as MySpace and Xanga make it easier than ever for predators to cloak their identities online." Apart from life threatening crimes and sexual assaults, information published by "innocent" kids over social network profiles have been exploited into financial scams, defamation, and mis-using user's photos and videos into pornographic content. This information has caused people to loose their jobs, break relationships and receive threats (by using contact information). OSN has become an attraction to teenagers, who're not yet completely aware of all its black side. And so they post a lot more private stuff, that's what is exploited by online predators. Following incident will make the point clearer (if not yet): http://www.cbsnews.com... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CBS News Technology Analyst Larry Magid had a look at one personal profile on the site, belonging to a 15-year-old girl. Magid says the girl writes in her description, "Drink a 40, smoke a bowl, sex is good, life is great, we are the class of 2008." "Now if you were a predator and you read something like that, what would it tell you about this young lady?" "I'd target her, I think," Magid replies. Now, I don't think private networks -- that you mention -- are related to OSNs. Technologies like VPN (Virtual Private Networks) help to restrict communication among a well known set of people. On the other hand, OSNs are designed for helping people to meet new (and so unknown) people and are for casual communication (in contrary to confidential matters). Just to have private communication, I think, social network will be a least qualified tool. Alright, it seems that you've misinterpreted the information and stats those I mentioned in R1. They indicate the relationship between people absorbing themselves into online worlds with rates of suicides due to social loneliness. Online worlds provide them an easy opportunity to become socially isolated. If they don't indulge into online worlds, then they wouldn't come into picture as far as those stats are concerned (these stats are not about in general suicide cases so your argument holds little irrelevant here). Now apart from the stats, if your claim is like -- lack of online worlds would force people to commit suicide, when they can't find good company in real world then I would argue that it will, indeed, be exactly the opposite case. There will not be any easy way out for those people to get away from reality i.e. to indulge into online worlds and get a false temporary feel of importance -- and so they will have to stick to reality and try to adapt real world communications capabilities -- which is going to help them in long run. And thanks for mentioning some of the specific resources. In fact, this very platform -- debate.org -- is a very good example of a specialized platform. Here we don't create our profiles with photos, videos, and personal irrelevant stuff like people do on OSNs. As mentioned before, OSNs are generic in nature (nothing specific about it!) and so fail to focus on any specific area. Whereas, this site is restricted to facilitate debates -- that's it! And that's why better than some debate-like functionality that usually exist on a generic social networking site. The difference in quality (and relevancy) of discussion content can be seen by comparing debates here with forums over social networks like facebook, orkut, myspace etc. Well, yes, at the end of a day, it is a personal choice for everyone whether they want to waste time on social network or not. We can just, at most, point out the possible harms and express our opinions here :) To summarize: OSNs waste your time with opportunities to indulge into casual (useless) browsing through others profile content, photos, videos. OSNs offers nothing helpful due to lack of focused content. OSNs have been exploited by online predators to harm innocent users by using their profile information. OSNs help spammers to flood you with advertisements targeted based on your interests mentioned and tracking your activities there. On the contrary, a platform designed specifically for some specific purpose -- like debate.org -- serves much better for a specific purpose . And so I would appeal people to say NO to those wasteful OSNs and urge to vote in my favor :) BBE, thanks for the fair game -- I wish -- may the better debater win :) Btw, you mention about some people who manage to cut down their OSN usage to minimum hours and succeed in real life communities and activities -- I think, they've realized it's real worth then!