Thing 18

Social networking is changing American culture as well as those of other countries. The positive side of social networking is the virtual nature of the beast. People can easily meet and exchance information, create a virtual persona, and be creative. My school blocks all access to MySpace and YouTube.

The downside to social networking is the tendency of some people to attempt to use this technology to exploit others, gain illegal contact, and over represent themselves. It has led some to observe that the photos posted to these accounts are inappropriate and simetimes illegal. I read recently of a 17 year old boy who was convicted of engaging in child pornography because he posted a photo of his ex-girl friend on the web after they broke up.

I have discussed this behavior in some of my college writing classes. I observed that society is changing because what parents may deem inappropriate, such as nude photos being posted on the web, teens find socially acceptable. The social web sites allow teens to escape social censoring as occurs at the movies for self-imposed rules of society. Most of my students agree that social websites allow for activities that were disallowed a few years ago to transpire up to several millions of times per week. It can be argued that the Web is their electronic source of self-worth.

I set up a MySpace account several years ago, I also have a Twitter account as well. As a male teacher, I do not have students as friends; although, several female instructors have established MySpace accounts and use them to check in on students and to be available. I have no interst in such contact because I believe that it could lead to misunderstanding and allogations of unfair or unethical communications between males and females. My wife is very uncomfortable with this idea as well.