SocialNetworkingStuff - home

Julie Curiel &amp; Megan Myers 
 
Have you or somebody you know ever used a social network of some kind? The answer for most people is probably yes. Social Networking Statistics from 2010 states that 47% of online adults use social networking sites and 73% of teens and young adults are a member of at least one social network (&quot;Social Networking&quot;). A social network is a place on the internet where people can go to connect with other people from around the world. You create profiles on these sites where you can befriend other users to have conversations, share photos and videos, create blogs, and upload information for other people to use. Even though there are millions of social network users, there are also many of pros and cons to using them. 
 
Social networking has many ways for people to connect and have relationships online, but this creates a scenerio where people can also easily create false identities and hurt other users. In the 2003-04 school year, i-SAFE America surveyed students from across the country on a new topic: Cyber Bullying. The survey came back with shocking results, including that 42% of kids have been bullied while online and 1 in 4 have had it happen more than once (&quot;Cyber Bullying&quot;). Cyber Bullying is when someone bullies other people over the internet, where it's easy to feel empowered over others because you don't accually have to face them. These incidents have created scarey situations when the bullying didn't stop at school and continued to follow students home when they recieved hurtful messages online. This was the case on January 14, 2010 when a 15 year old girl hung herself in her South Hadley home after being bullied at school and online when she moved to Massachusetts from Ireland. It was bad enough that she was the new girl at South Hadley High, but when she caught the eye of the school football captain Sean Mulveyhill, the girls at school started tormenting her calling her names like &quot;Irish whore&quot;. The harrassment further continued when she was shoved into lockers in the hallways, and encouraged to kill herself on Facebook. On January 14th Phoebe Prince had had enough when classmates drove by and threw a soda can at her and screamed &quot;whore&quot; out the window while she was walking home from school. That day Phoebe hung herself on a stairwell by a noose she'd fashioned from a scarf. These incidents and many others give great examples of the negative effects social networking can present to people, but if everyone is educated about these harms further incidents like these can be prevented. 
 
Although there are numerous pros and cons to using social networks, the positive evidently outweighs the negative, for so many people around the world continue to use them. Many experts believe that even though social networks can pose as easy territory for stalkers and bullies, social networks in themselves can become the solution. Some sites are providing information for their users in order for them to stay educated and continue to safely use these networks in the way they were designed to be used. In some cases, sites like Facebook and Myspace are creating ways to keep profiles private and ways for users to report suspicious actions to administrators. Overall, social networks can be good and bad, but if people use them correctly they can help to prepare everyone for the technology-based future that our society is evolving into. 
 
Mrs. Greco- Megan was absent (she was in charge of the positive paragraph) so this is the work i've done.