In this day and age, it's almost impossible not to belong to a social network like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. We connect to these sites so that we may catch up with old friends, family that lives far away, and even make new friends through common interests. These sites however pose some possible problems and threats. Some common problems are putting too much information on these sites for the general public to see. If a complete stranger goes to your profile and sees all of you personal information, that person may go and use it, stealing your identity. Another problem is that many people, especially teenagers tend to create "another persona", someone they wish they could be. They might get carried away with this and get lost in this second persona. One huge threat with social networking is cyberbullying. It is absolutely disgusting that a child goes to school and get bullied on and then when they get home, they have to endure more of it on line. There are too many young teenagers today that are committing suicide because of this cyberbullying.
One very interesting social network site is Second Life. Second Life is a site where you can create. as mentioned above, a second persona. It is interesting because you can go shopping, hang out in cafes and even attend classes without leaving your home. I do have a Second Life account, but I don't currently use it because I am too busy to be online all the time.
I agree with you, Jamie, that it is impossible to not belong to a social networking site. Everyone we know has one, including family members, teachers and co-workers. If we don't have one ourselves, people look at us strangely and try to convince us to make an account. I also believe that many individual's, including people that i know, do put too much information on the internet. These individuals really should try to put a limit to what they are posting. It is a scary thought knowing that strangers may be capable of seeing our accounts and may in return steal our personal identity.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the fact that too much personal information is displayed on this networking sites and, at times, it can lead to serious problems. I know a few people that were denied jobs or internships because of the content of their profile and the pictures displayed. Nowadays, I think that these sites are very essential for employers because they can get to know more things about the person they choose to hire.
ReplyDeleteI was a victim of cyber-bullying and I agree with the high percentage of occurrences. However new legislation is underway to challenge those issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree that internet is making our life convenient than before. However, it creates more issues in our lives. People steal other people's identities. We barely saw the news about how to prevent it from those people in the old days but now, we read the articles on line, magazine, or newspapers that teach us how to prevent those people.
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