The Internet was created with the intent of spreading endless amounts of information across the globe at the click of a mouse. However it has now become the most vital piece to the way the youth of America grow up, find interests, make friends, and even make identities for themselves.
The word "Friend" used to indicate/refer to a person who an individual shared a personal bond with and spend time with. Now, in the age of Facebook and Myspace, it can often be someone you barely know/see or even a completely random stranger. This change in semantics has become so socialized in us through our frequent use of these social networking sites that we really haven't noticed or acknowledged it. While post-adolescents and all those that had part of their teen years free of the social networking craze can distinguish between who a real-life friend is and who an internet pseudo-friend is, the numerous elementary school kids who are now being exposed to social networking may not be able to make that some judgment. The 13 year old from the video whos name was "Kyle Calamity" was frightening enough, but the fact that his even younger brother was on a junior version of a social networking site that involved avatars and friending. Children are being taught how to make virtual friends when they should be playing with their classmates and neighborhood friends. This plus the very popular trend of "upping friend numbers" on myspace has marginalized the concept of friendship from something intimate to something empirical.
Another aspect is that it has publicized social events into a spectacle rather than something of human interaction. With people constantly putting up statuses on facebook or tweets on twitter about everything and anything they do, both the banal and adventurous aspects of life are publicized, as if everything in this life is to be made known to everyone rather than it being enough for the person experiencing them to realize. I suppose Shakespeare was right that all the worlds a stage.
Notice I haven't even delved into the easy and obvious aspects of sexual predators and how they can so easily stalk numerous underage children thanks to these sites, which allow people to post any pic as long as it does not depict nudity, and also allows users to list address, phone, and other contact information.
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