Social Networking: Good or Bad?

Are social networking sites harmful or beneficial to society. My initial reaction to this question was, no Facebook and other related sites are not harmful, just put your stuff on private and its gonna be all good, but upon research my opinion has now changed. I now understand why so many people state that social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are harmful to society.

First of all social networking sites such as Facebook do not always provide the best security or privacy settings. For example, even if you are not friends with a person they can still send you a message or poke. My friend just recently put up a status stating "Getting poked people who are not even on my friends list... F***ing creepers bro". This shows how people you may not even know can communicate to you. What is so bad about this that random people can send harmful, provocative, or inappropriate messages. The only way to stop this is by blocking the person. Another issue with Facebook's security and privacy settings is that when using certain applications or games you have to allow access to some of information. This article for NBC Bay Area News states that Facebook will now allow access to user's address and phone number when using certain applications and games. This can be easily prevented by not posting that information in the first place, but with so many people using the site, I highly doubt that everyone will not not have this information on their profile.

The lack of privacy and security settings people are exposed to being subject to being stalked, harassed and cyber-bullied. For example, there is a new thing on Facebook named see friendship. It allows users to see everything you and another person have in common, every wall post, mutual friend liked pages in common, etc. That is very stalker and creeper status. For some time reports on The Daily Mail have reported in an increase in crimes related to Facebook have raised. This shows how Facebook does only expose you abuse and harassment, but it also exposes to crimes.