Facebook: Social Networking or Social Destruction?
 

Although Facebook seems to be the worlds biggest Social Networking site, is it actually doing our social skills any good? Yes, we are able to keep in contact with a lot more people than we would be able to in real life, but does that mean we actually do? Or do you believe that sites like Facebook actually cause more damage to social skills?


Found this article from yesterday which is another example of how Social Networking seems to be more destructive towards social interaction. Very sad story here:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ds-helped.html

People who think that the "friends" they acquire on social network sites are actually FRIENDS are deluded. Why on earth would anyone expect a total stranger to recognise whether someone is serious or not about committing suicide, or for that matter even care?

This woman's mother needs to look closer to home to examine why her daughter felt the need to express her intentions on facebook to millions of total strangers, rather than seek the help and support of her own family and real friends. Easier to blame other people though eh?

It is good.

It gives people confidence to write things to people they wouldn't normally say in real life, and I don't mean death threats.

It isn't as good as it once was because it's dull now and alot of people have said that, I thought this could of been Bebo's time to shine again but I was on it last night for a second and it's a mess now.

So that's out off the picture, I give Facebook another year at a max before it dies and something else takes over.

But I quite like it really, It's like Twitter because you can update your status whenever you want and say what you think and have people respond, of course you can't talk to Celebrities,
But it's better than Twitter in the sense that there's that bit extra to do.

People just love to make a big thing out of nothing really.

That's a sad story, I suppose people didn't realise she was serious though and one said she's done that before. Having said that if she was a friend of mine and I lived nearby I would check she was ok and If I didn't live close get someone else to.

When I joined FB first I was on alot now I have a quick check once a day or every second day, the novelty has kind of worn off now!

Sad story :(

Guess it's good and bad really. All depends how you use it. Some get more addicted than others. It's weird cos I don't even know why I use it, I don't keep in contact with many people over it, it's one of those go with the flow things.

Yes even Facebook has a Dark Side.

By and large Facebook is a good thing. I hate these weird, abstract arguments from miserable old fucks that invariably lead to no conclusion. You know the ones. 'Facebook is destroying real contact' or 'Facebook is turning us all into hermits' or my favourite of the more hysterical ones - 'we are going to forget how to communicate with spoken language!'. This depsite the fact that young people today socialize with greater freedom and regularity than any of their ancestors ever did.

That's a sad story :( I deleted 373 people from my Facebook (including a lot of people from here, sorry if that includes you, it wasn't personal!) because it worried me when I thought about actually how many people could be viewing my personal information at any one time. I mean it's not like I'm giving out my home address over it but still, you share personal information over social networking sites because that's what they're there for, and there really isn't any need to have nearly 1000 people added who can see that. I didn't mind having that sort of number added over Bebo because that's nowhere near as personal as Facebook. The down side of deleting lots of people though is that they do tend to notice and I've already had several people I deleted request to add me again... awkward :hugesmile:. If I saw someone post a status like the one in the article, I think my first reaction would unfortunately be that they were attention seeking. Of course, I'd feel absolutely awful upon finding out the person had actually died, but I certainly wouldn't have been heartless enough to comment on the status calling them a liar in the first place. It would depend who posted it though I suppose, if it was one of my close friends, I'd be able to tell if it's genuine or not.

I know so many people who've made actual friends through social networks,myself included. Everything has a dark side,but there's a lot of good to social networks as well,people never tend to hear that as much.

I agree with that point. The good stuff is rarely written about. Although I sometimes it is. I remember once a group I was invited to about somebody who found a camera whilst on holiday and then started a group to find the owner. They found them and returned the camera to them. :hugesmile:

I'm in touch with ex schoolpals and colleagues who I thought I'd never see again, so yeah I think FB is great! Can't be doing with these people who have 2000 friends, but only know maybe 10 of them in real life.. Thatto me is not what Facebook is all about

This.

I think it is more so social networking. It is only social destruction if you are not careful. I think people need to be more careful of who they accept as friend requests. Random people have added me before who I don't even know so I declined them.

I've never tried facebook. I had a myspace page a few years ago, and it was just dull so i deleted it.

I got an e-mail invite from my grandma to check out her facebook page over the holidays. Ummmmmm. no. Not gonna happen.

Lol.. aw, why not?! Old people doing technology is cool!

Cause she's nuts. She'll prolly have something racist on it without realizing it's racist.

She does have a habit of saying racist things unintentionally. Old people do that. :|

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Hahah.. I know! My Grandma was terrible for it. Not just racism but downright political incorrectness!

She just could never get her head round the fact that words that were "acceptable" in her day just aren't any more!

and whenever i try to tell her something is racist, her excuse is "what are you talking about! I'm not racist i watch Oprah every day!!" :shrug:

:laugh3:

:laugh2:

One of my grandparents was like that.

She seems to be a hysterical nutcase that I wouldn't necessarily confine to Facebook. There're thousands of people, some on this website, that invest far too much time and attention in their "haters" when in fact they should just pull the plug and go read a ****ing book or something.

I just hate the lack of privacy options. If you change the slightest bit of personal info, it gets posted to everybody's news feed, as does every post you make on a forum. Then there is the photo uploading. You can detag photos, fair enough, but you can't take them down and when they go up, it's not only your friends that could see any old candid drunken photo of you, but your friends' friends, your friends' friends' friends and so on.

Haha.. thephoto thing drives my sister mad! I get pm's regularly just saying "get it ****ing off NOW!" And I know I've posted a not very good photo of her. Conceited witch!

Yeah it's not very good despite their constant "improvements". I could look through a whole photo album of someone I dont know if one of my friends was tagged in a single picture.

I'm not a fan of FB, I don't see it adding anything to my life, so I don't use it anymore.

And I agree with whoever posted that it was her choice (about the girl who killed herself). Sounds like she thought about it a lot, and talked about it. If she done such a thing she much have been having a horrible time here.