Online social networking barely meets the challenges of social isolation - mainly because no matter how long I have been in contact with a person online, if I am socially isolated, then the risks of social networking include trust (who do I trust?) and self-disclosure.
Usually the rule-of-thumb here is to trust only persons you know in real life. For a socially isolated person such as I, the number of people I know who I trust in real life is at minimum of 6 or less people.
Given that most of the friends on your online social network (internet messengers such as MSN Messenger and Yahoo Chat) are strangers who you will never meet, the best practice is to keep your self-disclosures to a minimum with them and thus follow a "don't ask, don't tell" rule i.e. unless a person asks, you don't disclose personal information.
Personal information includes any information which identifies me such as first name, last name, address, phone number, date of birth, bank account number, etc.
Likewise, I make it a rule not to disclose my personal information unless I totally trust that person. If anyone asks, and I don't trust them, then I reserve the right to not disclose such information.
If you do give a deeper self-disclosure online, then the rule is to be pro-active if and when other strangers online who don't know you that well try to use that information to bully, harass, insult and intimidate you. This includes avoidance of revenge even when the insults lead you to focus on the negative rather than the positive.
Rather than revenge, the proper response is silence. Since that person does not know you and is trying harass you, by not responding, you do not look like someone who is reacting to what he or she divulges about you. Nothing stops an internet bully like silence.
Ultimately I am responsible for the amount of self-disclosure I make online.
Returning to online social networking, social isolation may lead to embarrassing side effects, such as being too forward in online social networking services. The counteraction to this forwardness is to limit my use of social network services.
In my case, I have found that most of my embarrassing moments in social networking services has occurred when I am extremely fatigued i.e. the result of inadequate rest. It is remedied by going to sleep at or around midnight rather than 3 AM.
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