Social Networking Sites Have Had A Predominately Negative Impact On The Lives Of Adolescents

By Melissa Mooney (Aged 15)

Social networking has grasped control of almost every adolescent's life. There is no point in trying to deny it. Everywhere you look you will undoubtedly find a young teenage girl with her eyes glued to her Blackberry updating her Facebook status, not mature enough yet to fully understand how foolish she looks as she narrowly avoids nasty collisions with several people in a crowded corridor on her way to class, all for the sake of informing the whole world about the "state" of history class and how she is going shopping for some high heels to wear for her next disco after school.

She will then proceed to sit down next to her best friends, also "Tweeting" on their flashy touch-screen phones. The shocking part of this image is that they are so excessively engrossed in their social networking that they rarely converse during this peculiar social convention. If people care to hear my opinion on the matter, I think social networking is such a self-contradictory term to use for simple websites that have only succeeded in raising a new breed of socially awkward, paranoid teenagers.

A frightfully widespread issue I have observed myself as a regular user of Facebook is cyber-bullying. This generation of young, fresh-faced are becoming too self-conscious and paranoid by all means. They care too much about what other people think of them and all t hey seem to strive for in life is to be accepted by every single member of their peer group, which in my opinion is a bit sad. This desperate bid for constant attention and acceptance leads to jealousy and hatred which I have seen burn in people's eyes as if they possessed the sceptic scarlet eye of the Devil. They viciously attack anyone who is of any threat to them, be it on an intellectual level or based on outer appearance.

In this day and age, such hatred should no longer exist, but due to the presence of the evils of Facebook, many adolescents feel they can do so without being caught. This is intolerable behaviour and torturous towards the victim and once it is posted on Facebook, it is there to stare you horridly in the face forever. This world would contain far less hatred and condescension if social networking sites ceased to exist.

Another issue in relation to "anti-social networking sites" I wish to point out is that it is a serious distraction from more important aspects of an adolescent's life. The target group Facebook and Twitter are aimed at is vulnerable, immature adolescents who have not experienced life enough yet to realise that there is more to life than technology. It upsets me severely that there are vast amounts of unspoiled nature and an abundance of the great outdoors available to the majority of adolescents to enjoy, yet they completely ignore this beauty and choose to let technology have first say in their lives. Adolescents should be focusing on studying, doing reasonably well in their exams and setting themselves up for the rest of their lives accordingly.

Many teenagers suffer from an obsessive attachment to Facebook and feel they must be constantly online or they will miss out on something "important." I know for a fact that there are many teenagers guilty of going on the Internet to carry our research on a project or to use Google Translate to help them with an Irish essay only to end up logging onto Facebook for the whole evening. This is an absolutely ridiculous issue that has gotten way out of hand and it enrages me that the young, innovative people of our time brimming with ideas and opinions, are throwing away their future by substituting their homework for social networking.

This world could be a much better place to live in if everybody played their part and dedicated fully to their school duties. This kind of future is non-existent at present and always will be until computers are replaced by a more superior machine that will motivate people to contribute to the world's future. Unfortunately, this will never be the case. The next generation are being ridiculously lazy and the world's future looks bleak at best. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg, for inventing the demon that is to create this eternal standstill in global development. I hope you are in your office cackling at what you have gotten away with.