Social Networking

Social networking sites became so popular in the past years. The key side of social networking is communication with others. Online networking is especially popular with teenagers who have a not ending need to stay in touch with their friends. It is the most popular activity among teenagers and their treat social networking as a big part of their lives. For them social networking is an online place where they can express themselves. They feel free in creation of their profiles, because no one is checking what they are doing online.

Popular networking sites like MySpace or Facebook are influencing teenager’s life, because of the amount of time they spend at these sites. Most teenagers have at least one profile, where they make everyday visits and where they spend hours on updating their profiles information and on checking profiles of their friends. Social networking is a substitution for spending time with friends in a real world and this creates a society of kids “growing up online”.

Social networks form virtual societies that are addicted to the use of the internet. Teenagers spend too much time on the computer so they have no time to spend with their family and friends. Nothing can get their attention because they are too busy on their online activities and they lose tract of times. Also routine activities like homework or home tasks are ignored because of spending hours online.

Social networking gives people a chance to share photos, videos and stories of their life. They have an opportunity to find friends that they haven’t seen for a long time. It’s a way to stay in touch with people who have moved away. Social networking also provides a chance to interact with people who have the same interests. You can easily exchange you point of view with others and see what other people’s opinions are.

“Second life” is a type of social networking where you use online to withdraw from real life. Even people with poor social skills can easily get into touch with other people. “Second life” allows a person to interact socially in a virtual world and helps to develop communication skills. In real life it is hard to start a conversation with a person you just met, but online people feel less pressured in online interactions. ”Second life “gives you emotional and personal presence so can do what you want and you can say anything just by typing it.

Use of social networking to form relationship with other people is also growing in popularity in political campaign. Barack Obama’s social networking strategy was based on reporting and comments. The campaign posted candidate’s speech and linked to materials generated by supporters. The campaign was spread much more by internet operations than usual presidential campaign.

The using of social networking may have some risk for users, because there are many problems with social networking. Social networking used to be a place where teenagers met, where they could keep track of their friends, but now things have change. Social networking involves sharing information and sometimes teenagers put too much information about their contact information, name or even location of their house. Sharing this personal information bring some risk because you can never be sure who are you talking to. Unless you restrict you profile everyone can look at it.