Using Social Networking To Advance Education

Are you a student who uses social network sites like Facebook as a means to procrastinate from doing your school work?

Now you can actually use social networking to help your school work and advance your education.

Say, for example, you're taking the University of Colorado SOCY 4461 class. You can now use the Web to find study guides and other helpful documents from the class.

That's what Class Hero is all about, as a Facebook application partner. Use it to gain some helpful background and perspective if you need to write a Sociology Essay, for instance.

Of course, you should not use Class Hero -- or any tool -- to plagiarize or cheat. Use these tools as assistance, but make your work your own. Plus, if you've heard about Class Hero and sites like it, chances are your instructors have, too, and are prepared.

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Study: Facebook Profiles Can Be Used to Detect Narcissism

A new University of Georgia study suggests that online social networking sites such as Facebook might be useful tools for detecting whether someone is a narcissist.

“We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others,” says lead author Laura Buffardi, a doctoral student in psychology who co-authored the study with associate professor W. Keith Campbell.

The researchers, whose results appear in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users, analyzed the content of the pages and had untrained strangers view the pages and rate their impression of the owner’s narcissism.

The researchers found that the number of Facebook friends and wallposts that individuals have on their profile pages correlates with narcissism. Buffardi says this is consistent with how narcissists behave in the real-world, with numerous yet shallow relationships. Narcissists are also more likely to choose glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photos, she said, while others are more likely to use snapshots.

Untrained observers were able to detect narcissism, too. The researchers found that the observers used three characteristics –- quantity of social interaction, attractiveness of the individual and the degree of self promotion in the main photo – to form an impression of the individual’s personality. “People aren’t perfect in their assessments,” Buffardi says, “but our results show they’re somewhat accurate in their judgments.”

Narcissism is a trait of particular interest, Campbell says, because it hampers the ability form healthy, long-term relationships. “Narcissists might initially be seen as charming, but they end up using people for their own advantage,” Campbell says. “They hurt the people around them and they hurt themselves in the long run.”

The tremendous growth of social networking sites – Facebook now has 100 million users, for example – has led psychologists to explore how personality traits are expressed online. Buffardi and Campbell chose Facebook because it’s the most popular networking site among college students and because it has a fixed format that makes it easier for researchers to compare user pages.

Some researchers in the past have found that personal Web pages are more popular among narcissists, but Campbell says there’s no evidence that Facebook users are more narcissistic than others.

“Nearly all of our students use Facebook, and it seems to be a normal part of people’s social interactions,” Campbell says. “It just turns out that narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships – for self promotion with an emphasis on quantity of over quality.”

Still, he points out that because narcissists tend to have more contacts on Facebook, any given Facebook user is likely to have an online friend population with a higher proportion of narcissists than in the real world. Right now it’s too early to predict if or how the norms of online self-promotion will change, Campbell says, since the study of social networking sites is still in its infancy.

“We’ve undergone a social change in the last four or five years and now almost every student manages their relationships through Facebook – something that few older people do,” Campbell says. “It’s a completely new social world that we’re just beginning to understand.”

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Oh, The Excitement of Watching Cheese Age!

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Video: It's Not YourSpace, It's OurSpace Parents Say

MySpace.com has a reputation for being the premiere online teen hangout -- but perhaps it is undeserved. A recent survey reveals that nearly 40 percent of MySpace users are between the age of 35 and 54. Facebook.com says its fastest growing demographic for its users is older than 25.

Is the Internet getting old? What do kids think of all this?

Tamsen Fadal has the story.

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Tech, Media Organizations, Non-Profits Launch Project Online Safety

Technology companies, media organizations, trade associations and non-profits joined together to announce their collaboration in launching Project Online Safety, an educational campaign focused on promoting Internet safety for children.

The initiative is designed to provide parents and children with a centralized online resource of Internet safety tools and educational materials and supports and encourages the broadcast of a series of related national public service advertisements (PSAs) being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Ad Council.

Organizers say Project Online Safety is part of an ongoing, industry-wide effort working with leading advocacy organizations to educate parents and childrenabout the importance of online safety. The partners of the initiative thatare investing resources to support online safety programs are AT&T, BlogSafety.com, Cable in the Classroom (CIC), Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Facebook, Fox Interactive Media (MySpace), Internet Education Foundation, National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Network Solutions, News Corp., Qwest Communications,Time Warner Cable and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

"The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is pleased to be a partner in Project Online Safety," says Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC. "By offering one point of access to our collective Internet safetyresources, we can more effectively equip parents and their children with the tools they need to have safer experiences online."

The PSAs direct parents, guardians, and teens to visit http://www.cybertipline.com/ to learn about safe and responsible use of theInternet, as well as how to report threats. Administered by NCMEC, theCyberTipline is a reporting mechanism for child sexual exploitation. Reports can be made on the website or by calling 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). The PSAs will run on cable, broadcast and Internetproperties, including being accessible through links on the web sites of participating companies and organizations.

"As the leading high-speed Internet service provider, we are continuing to provide a superior Internet experience, and that includes providingtools and information to make that experience safe," says David Cohen,executive vice president, Comcast. "We're especially pleased to be working with our long-time partners at the Ad Council, our good friends at NCMEC, and other leading organizations on this important broad-based initiative."

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