Social Networking: A Social Downfall - Essay Example

Social Networking: A Social Downfall Introduction Methods of communication have been evolving and improving since the first humans walked the earth many eons ago. As time passed, communication methods have seen formats such as etchings on rocks and tree bark, smoke signals, written letters that were delivered by means of the Pony Express, mail through the post office, and telephones. These past two decades alone have been introduced to e-mail, an array of instant messengers, cell phones, and text messaging via cell phones. As technology improves, more amazing methods are being brought to light that allow people optional ways of communicating with one another. Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, have become the most modern and the most common methods of communication between people, especially for teenagers. While teenagers appreciate the ease in which they are able to communicate with friends and family members, there are many concerns in regard to this newer form of communication. Social networking sites are harming the social skills of teenagers, keeping them from other aspects of their lives, and have proven to be dangerous to their lives and well-beings. With all of these aspects combined, many parents have come to believe that social networking websites are harmful to teenagers. Taking the “Social” Out of Social Life While many people, teenagers especially, believe that Facebook and Myspace are considered to be social networking sites, there are still others, consisting of mainly parents, that feel that social networking is an oxymoron. Through these social websites, teenagers are able to keep in touch with friends, family members, and teachers, as well as being able to meet new people through the many communities via these networking sites. However, the more that teenagers depend on these websites to communicate with others, the less time they seem to spend with friends and family outside of their web-driven social lives. The days of talking on the phone or going to a friend’s house have long since gone with the introduction of these simple communicative tools, making having a social life more convenient to teenagers of this generation. A social life nowadays usually consists of friends meeting each other in various chat rooms or forums on social networking websites to talk. The biggest fear here is that teenagers growing up in this digital generation and putting too much dependency on these websites will begin to lose real social skills, as their methods are now centering more around a computer instead of face-to-face communication, or even a conversation taking place over a telephone. “The social skills that children have been taught over the years, such as making eye contact, how to properly behave around others and in public, and the appropriate uses of body language, will no longer be applicable when the majority of relationships and communications are taking place online (Zheng, 2009)”. It brings into question how teenagers will react in truly social situations when their social skills are slowly but surely deteriorating. While the older teenagers that had been growing up prior to these digital changes might be able to adapt and properly balance physical with the Internet, the ones being born into the digital age just as it was blossoming will be implementing a completely different set of social skills that will be difficult to adapt to a real world setting. As these websites begin to take over the lives of teenagers, friends and parents are having to find alternative ways to talk with their friends and children, or otherwise having to adapt themselves to the social networking websites. More conversations are being held over social networking websites than they are face-to-face. Parents are having to resort to Facebook and Myspace to see what their children are up to; many even use the embedded chat tools to inform their children that dinner is ready. Verbal communication is quickly becoming a thing of the archaic past. Facebook is Synonymous for Having Something Better to Do According to a study done by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (2008), roughly 86% of all high school students immediately go onto the Internet after school to check their social networking websites before beginning homework or chores, or before greeting their own family members. Approximately 13% of the prior figure admitted to still being on social networking websites around the same time that they should be going to bed, having accomplished nothing else upon arriving home from school. Herein, the education and grades of students are suffering because of the inability or want of teenagers to separate themselves from the Internet long enough to take care of their duties. In another study conducted by Doctor Larry Rosen (2007), 36% of parents who have teenagers have claimed that they have had to bribe their children with extended Internet time to get them to do chores, homework, or to simply sit down and have a family dinner. Parents have to implement the usage of these social networking websites to convince and remind their teenagers to continue to live a normal life filled with people and situations that exist outside of the plastic and wires of computers. Other parents use the threat of taking away time spent on the Internet if their children do not engage themselves in everyday activities. Indeed, many parents have set down strict guidelines in regard to their teenagers using Facebook and Myspace, not allowing their children access to these sites until their homework and chores have been accomplished, if not until a specific time of the day. There does not need to be a study conducted to show that teenagers have become almost obsessed with social networking sites to the point where they shirk off not only their educational duties and chores but daily mundane activities, such as eating with family or getting completely out of their bedrooms upon waking up, although Jesse Rice (2009) does make this point based on a survey that he did amongst a sample of teenagers throughout the United States. Simple tasks are left forgotten because a teenager is more concerned with what is taking place on their social networking websites. There are many teenagers that feel that their access to these websites are vital to their social lives as it is one of their most used methods of communicating with their friends, therefore including it as one of their tasks on a daily basis. Unfortunately, as is the case with many teenagers, as soon as they log onto the websites, there is little chance that they will be off and doing something productive soon after. Friend or Foe Without a doubt, one of the biggest fears linked with social networking sites is the people that teenagers meet outside of their physical friendship circle. Teenagers find one of the greatest perks of these websites to be the ease in which they are able to make friends because of the chat forums that the websites offer. While there are many teenagers who only friend and communicate with people that they know in the real world, there are other teenagers that truly take advantage of the social aspects of the social networking websites by befriending people that they do not know. As they get to know these people over the Internet, they begin to trust them and often set up opportunities to meet with them in a real world setting. Unfortunately, more often than is fathomable, the person at the other end of the social networking forum is someone that has no intentions of becoming friends with the people that they arrange to meet. With the rising of social networking websites, a new class of predator has made itself known: Internet predators. Each year, many teenagers are lured from their homes with the thought that they are meeting an Internet friend in real life for the first time, though many of these teenagers end up not returning home. “It is an unnerving concept to realize that the number of teenagers that go missing because of Internet predators only increases with each passing year (Allman, 2007)”. Teenagers firmly believe that since they know someone over the Internet that it is okay to meet them in person; many of these teenagers do not even have a passing thought as to the kind of danger that they could be putting themselves in. Social networking websites might be a great way to keep in touch with people that teenagers know, but it is the last place that teenagers should consider looking when it comes to starting new friendships and relationships. It is hardly a task anymore for a person to fake an identity via social networking websites, thus convincing teenagers that they are safe and respected people. Anybody can be hiding behind their computer screens, displaying false photographs of someone else to lead others to believe that they are someone else entirely. Sex offenders and child predators have begun to make use of social networking websites to attract more prey for themselves and, most unfortunately, the trap works more often than not. The Opposing Arguments Unsurprisingly, the majority of opposing arguments to the negative consequences of social networking websites come from the teenagers that use the websites themselves. Teenagers feel that social networking websites allow them to stay in contact with people in an easier, more convenient fashion, and that they are not losing social skills because of it. They claim that as they still meet with friends to see movies or to go out to eat, there is no chance that they will lose their social skills. Many even believe that “social networking websites have helped them to improve their social skills, as they enable teenagers to talk more freely to each other or to parents or teachers (Tapscott, 2008)”. Furthermore, very few teenagers disagree with the statement that communicating with friends via these websites is more important to them than homework or chores, making the claim that friends are more important than minor tasks. In regard to Internet predators, the majority of teenagers feel that their intelligence is being insulted when parents and teachers bring up the possibility of them getting into trouble with the people that they communicate with. They feel that they are smart enough to know who to talk to and who should be avoided, despite the statistics that show how many teenagers are taken by people they have met over the Internet. Teenagers want their parents to trust their judgement when it comes to making new friends. However, friends are not the only people that can be found over the Internet. Conclusion Even though teenagers seem to think that social networking websites are the greatest inventions next to cell phones and iPods, the reality of the matter is that these websites are deteriorating what it means to be social and how to properly socialize with people. Teenagers are quickly forgetting about the important things in life, such as spending real bonding time with family or friends, or making sure that they stay on top of their homework. After all, family, friends, and a good education can take people a long way in life, while social networking websites will hardly take them past their computer screens. Furthermore, the rise in Internet predators has caught the attention of concerned parents and adults, leaving them to wonder about just how dangerous social networking websites can be. Works Cited Allman, Toney. Internet Predators. Yankton, SD: Erickson Press, 2007. Palfrey, John & Gasser, Urs. Born Digital. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008. Rice, Jesse. The Church of Facebook: How the Wireless Generation is Redefining Community. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook, 2009. Rosen, Dr. Larry. Me, Myspace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Tapscott, Don. Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Columbus, OH: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008. Zheng, Robert. Adolescent Online Social Communication and Behavior: Relationship Formation on the Internet. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2009. Read More