social networking cs12 fall09

Teenagers use the Internet to keep in contact with people, meet new people and use it for various other reasons as well. When traveling and meeting new people that live in a different City, State, or even country that you live in the Internet and various social networking sites is a great way to keep in touch with new friends. It is also a great way to find old friends or family that you may have not seen recently because you live in different areas or just because you have lost touch with those people. Parents are very concerned with the Internet because of the harm that their children can get into by either talking to a stranger or someone they do not know to causing problems with another child. Parents that use parental controls on the Internet to monitor what their children are doing can use them to a certain extent if you try to block them from something they want to do like using the Internet to chat with friends or a popular website for example Facebook I think it will end up making the situation worse. Some children just need their space to be themselves, and some children cannot be themselves in person because of the way they grew up in etc. so they find a different way to be themselves by using the Internet. For example if you try to prevent a child from using a website like Myspace, Facebook, or twitter etc. they will just find a way around what you do not want them to do and do it regardless. The best thing would be to talk with your children and let them know that not all people are as nice as they seem on the Internet and should not be trusted with personal information. Some children use the Internet for all the wrong reasons that is why some parental control is needed but to much can result into rebellion. Social networking can be used to support a certain campaign or get a message across. President Obama used social networking tools when he was running for office and it helped him. There are so many people on the Internet today. There are many different search engines and if you type in lets say Obamas name for example many things will come up and people who are interested to learn more before they make a decision for example for voting would go and want to do some research on the person they would be voting for before hand. Social networking is also a great way to get a message across that is trying to be sent to people. Many people spend alot of their time on "virtual communities", one of those communities being "Second Life". "Second Life" allows you to communicate with people you may not know well it is a good way to learn how to socialize with people if you are a typically shy person. "Second Life" can be used by a person or child that cannot be themselves in real life or does not really get along with people as an escape. It can also be a way to help you in the long run for example business school students using it to test their entrepreneurial talents this is a good way to see where they will be at in the future or where they would need to improve certain things to help them in the future. As well as abused children using the program to work on social skills, team building skills, computer skills and more. It give them away to get in touch with people and try to break a that social barrier after being abused by someone they trusted. Social networking is a very major part in todays society from helping people out to keeping in touch with friends to even getting an important message across to people. Without social networking society today would not be the same.