instead of being out with our friends justifying the true definition of "socialising".
We see it year in, year out, the tragic publicity surrounding yet another teenage suicide related to anonymous, vulgar cyber-bullying. As always, the papers and media outlets chew the story up and spit it out, contaminating people with dramatic accounts of the tragic story in order to make a quick buck. This disgusts me. If the editors of these newspapers were actually pushing for social change rather than trying to sell a dramatic story something would have been done by now. Something that would prevent the heart-breaking deaths of those too young and too vulnerable to see past these pointless hate messages written by scum who they are better than in every way. Ask.fm would be shut down. Tagged would be shut down. 'Slane Girl' wouldn't have infested our news feed's. CLEARLY, the use of these websites is a shining example for our young people these days. So brilliant. So 'social'. How many varnished coffins must we bury before there is true change?
Yet, this isn't even the most worrying sign in this curious age of social-networking. The most worrying sign has to be the sexualisation of young men and women to the point where websites like Twitter, Bebo and more recently Facebook are becoming a plentiful habitat for the paedophiles in our society. I mean, who doesn't remember "Bebo Stunnahz 2k7" and the likes where barely teenage girls would plaster themselves with make-up, show off their cleavage and somehow try and make it socially acceptable by pulling a 'duck face'? This is the sort of behaviour that ignites reactions from predators ranging from Jimmy Saville to Larry Murphy. Is it really worth it?
What we must ask now is what caused this shift in our idea of what is 'social' and what is anti-social? Was it peer pressure? Was it Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Tulisa or even Paris Hilton? Or, was it the social-networks themselves?
On Facebook people have developed an obsession with acquiring likes by "friends".
"I have 3000 friends on Facebook", one naive teenage girl would interject.
"Really? And how many of them have you met in the past, hmm, say 10 years?", I would reply.
So who gets the most likes? Is it you? Is it me? Certainly not. It's the teenage boys and girls who bare their flesh to the world in the hope of one day becoming "FACEBOOK FAMOUS". How bleak is this shift? How 'social' is this shift? Sitting behind your computer screen posting verbal and visual diarrhoea is definitely not 'social'. It's terrifying, infectious and unhygienic to the young and vulnerable in our society. The way in which we are currently using social-networking is destroying our morals, ethics and ultimately our identity as a generation. It needs to change.
Finally, we have to begin to recognise the pointlessness of these wasted hours we spend glued to a computer screen, throwing valuable minutes of our lives down the toilet and flushing it as soon as we sign-in. We could be out chatting with our friends face-to-face, seeing the green irises of their eyes rather than the green LED that signifies that they're online. We could be having a drink. We could be at the cinema or playing sport.
But instead we sit watching the virtual world pass by on our news feed. It would be fine if your statuses were humourous, intelligent or vaguely interesting but instead I log on to find out what your dog had for dinner or what your nana said when she was drunk. Nobody cares. Stop this madness and let's take back the definition of "socialising".
To conclude, the man who made social-networking what it is today, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is portrayed in the film "The Social Network" as an arrogant, manipulative, social reject who betrays his only friend. If we continue to engage in 'social-networking' 24/7 could this be us? So, what's so "social" about "social-networking" anyway? Can't we utilise it in a more moral, ethical way? I'm sure I'm not the only one who believes we can.....
