Online social networking is destroying society
By Michael Carpenter
October 15, 2009 3 CommentsEvery day millions of college students log onto Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any number of social networking sites and, unfortunately, it is eroding our society from the inside. Rather than spending our time having fun with friends in person or doing something that has an actual impact on society for the better, we sit for minutes to hours toiling away on our keyboards in front of our ever-expanding monitors. We gain nothing from this waste of time other than decreasing social skills and a continually increasing lexicon of idiotic shortcuts of the English language. What we as college students really need is to get off our cushioned desk chairs and go out into the real world instead of relying on fake online societies for many of our social needs.
You may be screaming at me because of this blatant blasphemy against the titans of the internet, but I know what I’m talking about. I, too, use social networking sites, and I’m here to tell you: social networking is becoming an issue in today’s society. How are we going to teach the younger generation valuable social skills when our own social experience takes place in front of the cold glow of a computer screen? You have hundreds of friends, you say? Well, how many of those people do you actually know? How many of them have ever been invited to your home or even know where you live? Sure, Facebook and Myspace may connect old friends, but those occasional messages usually turn into nothing more than another virtual relationship for another fake social setting.
Even family and close friends are now spending hours online posting nonsensical one liners and writing short messages, but they cannot take the time to pick up the phone or even write an e-mail even though e-mail is actually part of social networking. What we are really doing in social networking is putting an unnecessary, and perhaps harmful, layer of space between ourselves and other people. In moderation, social networking can be fun, but it should never be a replacement for good old-fashioned, face to face interaction.
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Well you make some really good points but as with all issues, there is another side. I was looking today at this website http://socialnetworking.procon.org/ because they show both sides. Did you know kids spend an average of 9 hours per week on the sites? That doesn’t seem like a lot.
I do love this web 2.0 and look forward to it’s expansion. I hate the phone. The internet allows so much more sharing … AND for those who could otherwise NOT be able to *get out* into society ~ this IS a god send.
It’s all a matter of perspective. Mine is Social Networking ROCKS
I agree. I deactivated my FB account yesterday because I was tired of how people act on it. As if it is some high school poularity contest. Nearly all my friends were posting “Me, I, mine, My” in every posting. Not to mention that when you state your solicited opinion on something your friend has posted, their friends (whom you are most of the time not friends with, nor would you know them from Adam…) act as if they know all about you from your one comment, and get all nasty toward you…. when you know they wouldn’t have the balls to be so to your face.
I am so jaded by the site that I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. At the same time, I live so far away from family that they are hurt that I deactivated it because now they don’t have instant access to pictures of my kids, husband, and me.
When I realized how much I was making my status updates about me, I laid off of posting status updates. to somewhere around once or twice a week. Then I just kept on seeing it from other people and it made me ill. Apart of me wants to re-activate it for the sake of my family and just get rid of all the “friends” unrelated people, but I know that even some family members are 4th cousins twice removed and may as well be unrelated. Some of my family members didn’t even got on very often, and when they did only one or two of them actually looked at my pictures or status updates, so I really so no point in maintaining something that takes up so much of my time just for 2 poeple. I know it sounds selfish, but I am just tired of the garbage. Garbage in, garbage out, and I am tired of seeing garbage come out of me.