Should I trust her on Facebook?

Learning from and for society is getting interesting day by day to me, consciously thinking over small things gives me big thoughts now a days, on other hand knowledge of technology allows me to view social changes through the perspective of technology especially, internet.

One of my junior just started her Facebook profile, being a girl she is getting about 20 friend requests per day another friend of mine made about 200 friends in one on Facebook in about one month. It’s not a case of these two people but I think it’s a case of 90% Facebook population. Adding people into list is looks very simple thing but there is big psychological myth I can observe in it which I would like to share.

While travelling in train I noticed that people don’t interact with each other because they are busy with their mobiles or laptops it was not the case before 5 years. Many times we interacted with person sitting in front or beside us in train or bus but its not same now a days.

People today avoid interacting with strangers in public domain but on other hand they keep on adding strangers on networking sites. I think everyone will agree on that in virtual world it is difficult to know the real identity of person then why people enjoy adding unknown friends to the list? and why do they feel proud by showing their ‘highly populated’ friend lists. Ask yourself, will you make stranger friend while you are in park? Then ask yourself, how many friends added randomly? And then ask why you are doing so?

Trust, a missing element in E-world is also getting extinct from our normal life because of technology. We have learned now to decode physical appearances, intonations, backgrounds and body language in order to develop relations of trust with people we meet. But we are becoming paralysed in understanding real personality of strangers in virtual world.

Banks, corporate and governments suggest people on how to trust transactions online. Facebook also warn you to check URLs and warn you when you navigate to a page outside the Facebook. Governments are investing in hi-tech encryption services which can protect citizen data against fraud or misuse. Browsers like Firefox have their own parsing techniques which warn you about the possible doubtfulness of a webpage. All these methods helps to protect us online, still do not help us in determining how and why we trust somebody online.

“We no longer have the luxury of studying people “in-person”. Instead, we have to engage with them on interfaces, where their avatars become the faces that we talk to.” Says Nishant Shah, director of internet and society studies.

I think without having social design that helps us to figure out how to trust individual online like we have boards on railway stations to be aware of the pick pocketers etc. Many users are being subjugated by those who are more skilled in this navigating virtual environment.

Solutions of these issues do not lie in implementation of technology, because TRUST is not technical problem. We shall learn and teach to identify elements of digital identities. A trust-based design system where users should given identification by their participation in the community and trust ratings provided by their peers will become an essential part of digital identities. We need to learn how to inspect online individuality by making database searches, reading through the well-built narratives of the avatars by using suggestion sites that can validate information about the user, and remember that online conversations also carry an element of risk.

Something for all my friends using Facebook:

• Please avoid adding random people on FB
• Be careful while adding person having more than 3,000 people in friend list
• Do not post abusive on “strangers’ wall” nor allow others to do same on your wall
• Avoid updating status when you extremely happy or extremely sad, it’ll attract more strangers to your profile.
• Do set proper privacy credentials, use ‘help’
• Avoid kids below 14 years on social networking sites, try to scrutinize them while chat.
• Before adding anyone, go through his/her profile thoroughly
• Anything posted on Facebook (anywhere on internet) can be used as legal document
• Avoid making fake profiles; it’ll not serve your purpose of having more friends. Be what you are
• Follow security instructions genuinely , it’s for your betterment