Rosen's Assessments

Many enthusiasts claim that social networking sites have many promises that may come to fruition. Rosen states three main promises:

1. Promise for identity play, this means that people can toy around with being someone different online than they are offline. It has a promise to allow people to figure out who they are. Rosen disagrees with this promise. She would say that this identity play ruins the authenticity of a person and allows them to perform for other users. Their performances can be through pictures or outrageous comments. People do this in order to stand out from the massive amount of people on social networking sites. Promise collapses because there is a rush to stand out - "monotonous uniqueness".

2. Promise of anonymity, This allows people to open up about themselves in ways that they never would offline. Their curiosities may be explored on a new level since no one will know what they are. Rosen believes this promise is flawed because social networking sites allow people to over share information that no one would normally share. Also, there is no anonymity in this over share of information.

3. Promise of new learning experiences. Enthusiasts such as Danah Boyd say, “informal learning.... It’s where you learn social norms, rules, how to interact with others, narrative, personal and group history, and media literacy.” This means that in addition to social networking sites being used for entertainment they are also being used to learn about social norms and what is accepted social behavior. This is a hopeful assertion rather than a proven fact. Rosen argues that these new technologies are limiting our formal learning. For example, the social norms at church, in a library or a doctors office are to speak quietly. However, with these new technologies, such as a ringing cell phone and loud televisions, are forcing people to replace old social norms with new ones.

Overall: Rosen believes that all of these promises are mere assertions in wishful thinking. Furthermore these promises are unfounded and only make for good sound bites.

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