Online Social Networking Dangers and Benefits Essay

For years and years, the internet has been offering a very extensive variety of information, social networking sites, merchandise purchases, online banking and many other services that our grandparents and our great grandparents could only dream of. This doesn’t mean that it’s all good or useful information and sites. Neither does it mean it hasn’t had a huge impact on the way society is changing just because it is a virtual space. â€Å"The internet is home to millions of sites, representing both commerce and the people who share their thoughts and experiences with anyone who visits† (Amp Your MySpace Page 99) The webpages that have had much more impact on society are social networking sites such as, Myspace, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, etc.†¦show more content†¦(What Matters In America 52). Many kids are growing up in a world where their â€Å"friends† are a bunch of pictures on their profiles and a â€Å"community† is a virtual place where you can meet and interact with virtual people. Modern kids and teenagers are living in a world where they create their own virtual persona, which can be anything they want even if it’s not even close to what they really are in real life. This can even turn into a psychological issue because â€Å"these people grow up going to school, work and public places as one person but they still have that urge to become someone else once they’re online†(Google.com). There have been many reported cases where a good, trusting person agrees to meet with someone else only to find that that person is a sexual predator, a thief, or some kind of lunatic. It is true that even if you meet someone face to face instead of online you can find them to be jerks also, but I think it’s a smaller risk. I was told by my Mexican grandmother that in her good ol’ days, when a girl wanted to go out with a boy they would go out to a water fountain in the middle of the town park and just walk around and around until the boy of the girl’s liking gave her a flower; then they would walk together and get to know each other, which almost always ended in marriage. In our modern era, if you want to meet someone it seems that all you have to do is go onto Match.com orShow MoreRelatedSocial Sites: Virtual Playgrounds or Predatory Hunting Grounds956 Words   |  4 PagesSocial interaction via internet has become a raving craze, but the debate of online safety measures necessary for children using social sites has become a hot topic of discussion. Social sites open the door to online interaction with friends, relatives, and classmates; but they also enhance the risk of interaction with online predators. 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