Evick 1 Tyler Evick Maxine Patroni English 111 30 October 2013 Social Networking Sites are harmful Social

Networking Sites (SNSs) isolate people and put them at risk of predation. They are bombarded with advertisements and the younger audience is influenced by all of this. SNSs are the perfect place for predators to hide, they can easily lie about who they are and trick a younger audience into giving out personal information and then they become the target of these predators. SNSs have been proven to delay the growth of interpersonal skills in teens. This can result in later difficulty in creating and maintaining real relationships. (English). They are the perfect place for predators, and cyber bullies to lurk, and SNSs are often sites of harsh environments. The English language is also being hurt by SNSs because of all the acronyms and shortened words that used. All of these are dangerous for the younger audiences, as well as adults and businesses. SNSs do more harm than good, they are the perfect place for predators, cyber bullies, and harsh advertisements, which can all easily target the younger audience. These websites are home to many online predators that easily disguise themselves as a young teen to fit in with the younger audience and get close to them. Since you have no idea what the person really looks like just by talking to them you have no idea if they are telling the truth about their age, race, gender, etc. One can easily lie about who they are or what they do through a computer since there is no face to face interaction. This is how predators easily trick young teens into giving out personal information. The predators then use this information and get closer to the teen by becoming a trusted friend they can talk to about anything. There are some

Evick 2 cases where a predator will trick a teen into meeting up in real life. It doesn't happen frequently, but instances do occur of teens being deceived by adult predators and manipulated or persuaded into a one-on-one meeting. Such meetings can prove tragic (English). Along side predators, cyber bullies also hide among the many people on a social website. Cyber bullying is common within SNSs. On the Internet people can be far more harsh than in real life. They do not think twice about using cuss words or saying mean things to others. Things that someone would probably never say to another person face to face are now things that they easily say on a SNS. A persons words can have more impact than their fists. This is why cyber bullying is such a big issue within SNSs. To help prevent cyber bullying, many schools have adopted policies against it, or have made their own. Cyber bullying is not something to be taken lightly. Many people have committed suicide because of being bullied. The statistics are scary: Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, and victims of bullying are two to nine times more likely to consider taking their own lives than non-victims (Newswire). It is easy to believe that calling someone names or making fun of another person over the Internet is harmless, especially if you are just joking around and arent being serious. However, weather you are joking or not, it still hurts people feelings and makes them feel horrible, before you know it that person is having thoughts of suicide because of all the bullying. Sadly, another name was added to the death toll with the tragic passing of a 12-year-old girl in Florida who was the victim of extreme cyber bullying. This incident of extreme bullying resulted in the arrest of a 14-yearold girl and a 12-year-old girl. (Newswire) So it does not matter if you are being serious or not, you are hurting someone and could even go to jail for bullying. Accompanying predators and cyber bullies are an endless barrage of ads that take up a huge chunk of what you see on SNSs. MySpace has more ads than any other social website,

Evick 3 10% of all ads read online come from MySpace (English). However, MySpace, unlike many other SNSs, does not allow pop up ads at all, however they do use a hyper targeting advertising strategy, this scans all users profiles and looks for keywords from the things they talk about to put ads up on that persons profile (English). Communicating in any SNS can degrade whatever language is being used. People use acronyms and shortened words to make it easier to say what it is they are trying to say. Over time people eventually use the acronyms and shortened words in their everyday lives, even outside of SNSs. After a while you may forget how a word is actually spelled after using its shortened form for so long and this can weaken peoples vocabulary and they become worse at writing forget how to use correct sentence structure. Sometimes it even seems that people with English as their second language can use it better than people with it as their first language. I think this is partly due to the way people type and butcher the language on SNSs. Among all of this, there are a few good things that can come out of SNSs. SNSs make it easier for people to get access to better education and different learning experiences. Pearson Education, an international textbook company, recently developed a Facebook page to market their books and merchandise to college students (Wagner). They can also be of use to politicians as well. A politician can easily get information about themselves to the public very quickly. This can be very beneficial during elections. Barack Obama, a leading Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election, is using his SNS, mybarackobama.com, to reach supporters and raise money for his campaign. Obama's website exhibits convention advertisements for supporters, allows visitors to donate to the campaign, and includes a section for bloggers who want to post their reactions (Wagner). SNSs can also be helpful with Fundraisers. Anyone can easily find out about fundraisers through SNSs and get to a website where they can help out with their cause.

Evick 4 Social Networking Sites can be helpful at times, but there is still more harm done than good. SNSs are a place where predators, cyber bullies and harsh advertisements await anyone who uses them. They can also delay social growth in teens and make it more difficult to maintain real relationships.

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Works Cited English, Marlanda and Jennifer Sexton. "Counterpoint: Social Networking Websites Isolate People and Put Them at Risk of Predation." Http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.rccc.edu/. N.p., 2013. Web. 2013. Newswire, PR. "Cyber Bullying: Put an End to the Tragedy of Suicide by Bullying."Http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.rccc.edu/. N.p., 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 2013. Wagner, Geraldine, and Anne Whittaker. "Point: Social Networking Websites Provide a Healthy Way to Improve Friendships."Http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.rccc.edu/. N.p., 2013. Web. 2013.