Social Networking and Our Youth

When teens and young adults use social networking in a safe and healthy way, their futures are brightened. Unfortunately, there will always be a few that choose to use sites to hurt others and young adults need to be aware of the potential hazards that are out there. Past, present and future, social networking has positive and negative effects on youth.

In the beginning, it was things like BBS, CompuServe and AOL. Next came Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace and then of course, Facebook and Twitter ("The History of Social Networking", 2009). It was the beginning of a new era and a way for teens and young adults to interact with each other without having to be in the same room, city, state or even country. Before the Internet, children were out riding their bikes, playing in the mud and learning about things by actually getting out in the world and having an experience. They knew when they were outside playing, that if a stranger came by they were not supposed to talk to them ("10 Things Kids Used To Do Before There Was Internet", 2012). They wrote notes to their friends in class and actually read the encyclopedia in the library for research. Bullying was done face-to-face rather than from behind a computer screen. Kids were complaining about having to do their chores before going outside to play rather than wanting to sit for hours staring aimlessly at a computer screen.

The Internet and social networking sites of today give kids and young adults a way of communicating without having to step outside their comfort zone. They can play games and socialize with other teens their age and vent their frustrations of their personal life or arguments they had with their parents. Dr. Larry D. Rosen claims that teens that spend more time on social networking sites are actually better at showing virtual empathy to their online friends ("Social Networking's good and bad impacts on kids", 2011). Even though it's done electronically, they are able to support one another and not feel so alone in a world that has become so chaotic. Kids are able to get help with their homework by connecting to educational sites and tutoring sites with tutors that are available around the clock. In fact 59% of teens and young adults use social networking for help with school or career advice, while 60 million Americans use such sites for support with major life changes ("Social Networking", n.d.) These sites also help low income children, who are able to use them as a teaching tool for technology. The use of social networks gives them a step up when they are not quite able to afford it can actually give the child more confidence to seek a job they may not have been qualified for without the use of computer knowledge ("Social Networking", n.d.).

With the progress that social networking has made in the past few years, face-to-face interaction and socializing between teens and their peers has decreased at an extreme rate. Sites such as these give people a false sense of security putting them at risk to be preyed upon by online hackers and predators. Teens post things on these sites that are of a personal nature, such as phone numbers, e-mail, home addresses and schools they attend. Information like this makes it quite easy for sex offenders pretending to be someone they are not, to seek out young people who are actively seeking affection and continually exhibiting low self-esteem. In fact, one in five youth aged 10-17, has been sexually solicited online ("Social Networking", n.d.).

With the use of these sites, there has also been a rise in a new and now most common form of teen violence called cyber bullying. Nearly 25% of teens have been bullied repeatedly through social networking sites and 1 in 3 adolescents have been threated via the Internet. Coincidentally, less than 1 in 5 of those incidents has been actually reported to police. Cyber bullying can lead to damaging affects for teens, causing severe emotional