Social Networking: For Better Or Worse?

Worth reading:

Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. So what’s the net effect of social networking?

We gathered a group of wise people who spend their days thinking about this issue — Martin Baily, Danah Boyd, Steve Chazin, Judith Donath, Nicole Ellison, and William Reader, — and asked them this question:

Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?

Here are their replies.

Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog