If you haven’t joined, or heard about those teen online social networking websites such as Facebook.com or MySpace.com, then you may be losing a big part of being a teenager. And why not when almost all of the youngsters around the world are already glued to this kind of cyber socializing and you are only confined to your own personal string of friends?
Communicating and socializing through those social network websites have already been in use more than a decade already. The internet world has offered this certain type of online application in hopes of bringing different people together and having them communicate with each other in ways very different in those early years.
How does social networking started?
More than a decade ago, the concept of the website was started through MySpace.com. The initial concept was that it would offer people, not only youngsters or teenagers, free bulletin board where they can create their own web page and gain friends. A user can initiate his own website by entering into a free account, which would ask him/her of information of them, with an amount of detail that they prefer. They can invite other friends over and have them sign in with the website and have them join in your network. They can then have the space to post comments just like the way you are doing. Thus, social interaction was created through this bulletin board as people already seem to know how they can trace or chase another in the website.
The same thing happens with Facebook.com wherein you also have to make an account that puts up your information, views, an album of pictures (you are allowed to put up to several dozens of your pictures), create a list of your friends by sending out invitations, introduce someone to another, communicate with them through sending messages and posting comments to bulletin board, and finally, create your own blog site.
Those two examples of social networking websites have been an instant hit to kids, teenagers and other youngsters because of the flexible and great features they are afforded to use all for free. But they also were a boom to more adult crowd for the same reasons.
These websites have some drawbacks too to kids and teenagers
Because those websites are created with young adults and kids as their main target, more adult people ignored them leaving them entirely at the hands of those younger ones.
However, these young people have found a way to express all what they have to say, even engaging in such things that they should not publicly say. Hate, meanness, and angst were easily spread onto the entire website because of its nature. This has caused alarm to many people who have the knowledge of what has been going on.
Other unlikely things have also been the cause of alarm to many parents because of the uncontrollable situations arising from the online posting of particular events. Because the site is a live and organized for all members to see what was happening to every member, the information that a certain member has posted is easily forwarded even to strangers. This is a risk that not all has predicted.
Although to some degree, the parents of these teenagers are accountable to the way their children behave, the websites are partly to be blamed. Some restrictions should be imposed to encumber any form of meanness one member may own.
Joshua Shoemaker
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