Social Networking Websites: Harmful Yet Beneficial Essay Example

Thesis: Social Networking websites like Myspace.com affect teenagers socially, emotionally, and academically. Social networking websites have been in use for more than a few years now and have been used to bring people, information, and ideas faster than ever. However teens in particular have taken to using these sites for a plethora of reasons (most of the time replacing real world reactions). “Social-networking sites are among the last unregimented environments for young people, places where they’re free to explore issues of personal and group identity. Members of such sites “write themselves into being” through their profiles….trying out personalities and slowly coming to understand who they are and how they fit” (source 6). These sites unfortunately also have a bad side along with the good they can do for teens. Teens are able to interact with others while at the same time define themselves and even more; sadly sometimes more is a bad thing. Overall these sites have proven to benefit and harm teens socially, emotionally, and academically. In total social networking websites have many effects on a teen’s social life. The effects can even shape his or her personal and group identities. Many teens have found it is easier to find new “friends” and leave old ones behind because of these sites. In often times teens have a set of real world friends and a set of online “friends” that they talk to separately. This distinguishing among people has more or less tipped in favor of the online friends. This is because social networking websites are much more open and brutal against what type of people others hang out with: especially if the friends an individual knows in real life happen not to be in the online friends’ clique. Myspace is so public and open teens have purposely excluded good friends because other people do not view them as “cool” or because they are “out of it.” It is essentially like when someone forgets about an