If you were to walk into a school cafeteria today, the scene might be somewhat different from what you would have seen, say five years ago. Today you see students on their cell phones, chatting over IM rather than face to face. Whereas before students would spend their lunch hour catching up with each other on the latest gossip, today they are checking their Facebook or MySpace page to get the latest news. Who’s dating who, who broke who’s heart, and what’s going on this weekend, can all be found online.
Along with all the latest gossip and news, you can also find the latest catfights and conflicts on these sites. Cyber bullies thrive on these sites, leaving mean spirited messages on other student’s pages, for everyone to see.
Do you think that the social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are causing more problems among students? Do they cause conflict between people where there might not have been conflict? Or do you think that these sites provide students with an outlet to their emotions? Explain your reasoning.
When people are talking online, or IMing they tend to say things that they might not have said to a person face to face. When people are typing their thoughts they lose some of their filter that they might have if they actually said their words out loud. For this reason I believe that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are making problems between students worse than they might be if these students were actually having face to face conversations. The conflicts between students escalate in silence online. If they were having verbal arguments face to face they might be able to get some of their aggressions out and maybe even come to a resolution, teachers might see what’s going on and try and help them resolve their issues. Unfortunately there is no way for teachers to supervise all students profile pages and see what is being said, so if there is a problem teachers can’t help. Also, when students argue online in silence they are just bottling everything in and, like the girls in the video, just blow up when they finally do come face to face.
Wow, I was just thinking that the other day walking through campus during a 15 minute brunch time. So many students are on their phones catching up on the latest gossip, checking their social accounts, or posting an update. When did getting a break from school for lunch and eating and social gathering become more of a time to let the world know about how you did on a test, or what your current “mood” is, or how someone did something you didn’t agree with and you feel everyone needs to know right now. Not too long ago there was a fight that broke out just as the lunch bell rang and students needed to get to class. Only five minutes into the next period, students were informing me of who it was, how it got started, why it happened, what was going to happen to the students involved, and showing me a video that was already posted to youtube and myspace. My first reaction was shocked that students could get information out to the entire world that quickly, and amazed at how up on technology these students are. A quick second thought was that of embarassment for these students involved. With the use of technology, students lives are quickly becoming less and less private. I’m big into wanting to know the latest and greatest and using them for my benefit, but using it to run down someone’s name or life is unacceptable. So to answer your question if these social gatherings are causing more problems, I could only imagine if you were to ask that same question to the founders of these sites, they would have to agree that it was not the purpose of the site. It is the responsibility of the users to use it for what it was created for. But as users, we need to use better judgement as to what we do with it. Students haven’t matured enough to understand fully that there are often consequences to freedom of speech.
The idea of creating a MySpace or Facebook is to describe yourself and upload photos and indicate your personal interests such as music, favorite musicians etc. These sites also give the opportunity to link themselves to others within the system and people reveal their personal affiliations. These sites also allow friends to comment on each other’s profiles.
Both MySpace and Facebook have a messaging system similar to Email. MySpace has a bulletin board where people can post messages that all friends can read. MySpace is primarily a way where teenagers can communicate with each other. This could be something positive, but it could also turn into something very ugly. For example, Megan Maier was a thirteen year old girl who met a fictitious boy in MySpace. Then, this boy started saying that she was ugly and fat among other things and she committed suicide. Her parents didn’t know that the boy was a made up person by their neighbors. In my opinion, this was very sick! And the worst thing was that the adults were who created the boy’s fictitious profile.
Our youth needs to be educated about Internet safety. There are no classes that are going to teach young people about Internet safety, therefore; I strongly feel that if we have teen-agers and we know that they have a MySpace of Facebook, it is our responsibility to educate our children about Internet dangers.
In making an educated guess, I would say, “Yes,” social networking sites are causing more problems among students. I think that the non-physically confrontational nature of the internet allows for people to say things “out loud” they probably wouldn’t say in person because there are no immediate repercussions and no accountability, and they know there’s really nothing another person can do to hurt them through a computer monitor. I think it gives people more boldness to be mouthy and so it’s easier to be thoughtless and say offensive or hurtful things to others.
What I don’t understand is why the participants don’t have the foresight to think that they might come face to face with each other someday soon. I could understand more if each party was far away and they probably wouldn’t see each other face to face anytime soon, but many of these online verbal wars are among students at the same school. So of course, they’re going to see each other sooner or later, and when they do they’re going to confront each other and challenge what was said online.
So in this way social networking sites do cause conflict between students where there might not have been any—or at least escalate it.
Of course, I don’t think this makes the social networking sites themselves bad; it’s just one unintended negative result of them. And while students do need to have an outlet for their emotions, this is not an appropriate venue or method for doing it.