Social networks have made it easier for people to talk, coordinate and share information with others on a scale that seemed unreal even a decade ago – but society is still torn about whether to trust data and people they encounter online. The launch of Facebook gave people in 2004 a glimpse of the social networking boom that would last during the coming decade, but analysts responding to a survey conducted that year by the Pew Internet Project were not optimistic about whether it would “enhance trust in society.”

Social networks:

2004 prediction: By 2014 use of the Internet will increase the size of people’s social networks far beyond what has traditionally been the case. This will enhance trust in society, as people have a wider range of sources from which to discover and verify information about job opportunities, personal services, common interests and products.

This prediction was right on the money about the unprecedented access to data social networks brought to the world – but it was too optimistic expected busier website forums to “enhance trust in society,” as seen by the political partisanship and questionable content that divides the Internet much like cable news. Only 39 percent agreed with the Pew Internet Project prediction about social networks while 41 percent disagreed with or disputed it.

Better Living Through Social Media?

The reach of social networks has definitely grown since 2004, when Myspace and Friendster had just scratched the surface of connecting people online. An estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide in 2014 use some form of social media website, nearly one-third of Earth’s population of more than 7 billion, according to the International Data Corporation think tank.

Those sites are used so frequently that they rival cable TV as one of the top ways to discover news, with Facebook as the most widely used social network venue for news, according to a separate study conducted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Pew Research Center. Pinterest is even changing online procrastination into online shopping by linking to businesses that post pictures of products on the photo website.

Social media has replaced and surpassed the phone book as a way to find old friends and made meeting new ones so easy that online dating on Tindr or OKCupid has become a mainstream phenomenon. People are so connected by online sites that it takes more work to completely lose touch with an old friend or make a final break up with an old flame.

It was hard for some respondents to the 2004 Pew survey including Keith Fulton, a Verizon Communications executive, to imagine the rapid change a site like Facebook would have after growing out of a dorm room into the 21 st century phone book.

“Social networks will increase, but not beyond traditional measures,” Fulton told Pew in 2004.

Bigger Is Not More Reliable

The Pew survey got their prediction wrong when they expected people to trust what they saw on a vast online database, not to mention the companies who built their digital networks. Social networks collect information on users of their sites claiming it helps them better know and meet the needs of customers, but people are more concerned that their privacy is not an acceptable entry fee to be on social media. People feel less secure on social networks than using any other form of communication, according to a Pew survey published in November, in which 91 percent of respondents said consumers have lost control of how personal information is collected and used by businesses.

Pew Research Center

Mistrust of websites also results from government agencies in the U.S. and other nations using social networks to track citizens or even spread propaganda, which respondents to the Pew survey in 2004 were better at predicting than the think tank, including Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications consulting firm.

“As business models evolve for social networking, the ‘price of admission’ may affect acceptance into the ‘best’ networks, ” Arlen told Pew.

People access the news online but it can be as politically divided as cable news, reflecting that the reliability of social media depends on the people you follow online, similar to a response to the 2004 Pew survey from Ken Jarboe, president of the Athena Alliance Tech, a policy think tank.

“The networks will expand, but we will also have to be more selective in evaluating the information received through those networks,” Jarboe said.

The Internet can enable people to interact more with others online but cannot make them trust the world around them, said John Mahaffie, co-founder of the Leading Futurists, a consulting firm.

“It allows finer niche groups, allows the introvert to succeed where [he or she] may not have before,” Mahaffie told the Pew survey.

Introverts on social networks also lie or misrepresent themselves on sites like Facebook or OKCupid to get more attention, according to an article in Psychology Today by Gwendolyn Seidman, an associate professor of psychology at Albright College.

Pew Research Center

Better Online Society in 2025?



Social networks are entering maturity after growing so rapidly, so changes over the next decade could lead to a more reliable online community. The chief executives of social media companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are pushing back against government surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, and are trying to improve security and privacy on their sites to win the trust of their customers. The is also resulting in more involvement in social media that could lead to more quality information being shared online.