Social Networking

This I will be discussing the effects of social networking on today’s society. Social networking can have its good effects and its bad effects depending on how people use it and what their source of networking is. Most people use social networking in good ways, like to keep in touch with old friends or converse with new friends. Many times I use social networking to talk to my high school classmates or family members that I do not see very often. This usual occurs on a site called Facebook or on Windows Live Messenger. Facebook is a social networking website that you can post comments on people’s walls, write how you are feeling in your status bar, put up pictures and videos, and even chat to other friends who are online. Messenger is similar in the fact that you are able to chat easily with people who are online anywhere around the world. Some downfalls to being able to have all your friends see your pictures and you page is that some of your pictures may not be work friendly and now days employers search people applying for jobs and see what their social networking page looks like. This could be good or bad in a sense. Social networking can also be used to broadcast a large message to everyone. For example, here is President Barack Obama’s MySpace page. From this page he can put anything that he would like the people to be aware of, have people’s input on, or even have people vote on something. There are many many good things that can come from social networking. Some people even use it to find their soul mate. This more often happens in chatrooms like Chatablanca. In these places, you can find people your age, your type, and even people that have the characteristics you like. This can be good or bad. Some sick people use this as a way to find a person to possibly kidnap, or tell everything they want to hear to coax them into doing something they normally would not do. One of my favorite social networking options is Xbox LIVE. Xbox LIVE is a gaming area where you can play and talk to people anywhere in the world from you console at home. I often get together and play a game with friends from home, other colleges, or just people from the same building I live in. Some use it to find new friends. The other day I was playing a game and this guy was hitting on this lady hardcore, it was very funny. I am pretty sure they made each other friends so they could talk whenever they wanted.
So, as you can see there are many options to use for social networking and there are many ways to use in a good way and some ways to use it wrongly. I believe that the good ways greatly out weigh the bad ways. Social networking can be very addicting and cause you to get off track when doing homework so I ask that people try and set aside the Messenger, Facebook, and Myspace for enough time to get their homework done, then go right back to whatever you were doing.