After logging on to Facebook, I type in the name of one of my friends in the search box, expecting to see her name pop up first on the list. Gone. I click to another one of my friends’ pages; photos are gone, and her last post is a month ago. Instead of my friends filling my newsfeed, notifications from people I don’t really know pop up. More and more people have begun to delete their Facebooks. The appeal of connecting with people online through sites like MySpace and Facebook feels overshadowed by creepy people and [ ...continue reading ]]]>

After logging on to Facebook, I type in the name of one of my friends in the search box, expecting to see her name pop up first on the list. Gone. I click to another one of my friends’ pages; photos are gone, and her last post is a month ago. Instead of my friends filling my newsfeed, notifications from people I don’t really know pop up. More and more people have begun to delete their Facebooks. The appeal of connecting with people online through sites like MySpace and Facebook feels overshadowed by creepy people and overexposure of people through photos and information.

Once something is out there, it’s in cyberspace forever. People play around with their name, writing “Just” instead of “Justin,” or using only the first initial of their last name. But everyone knows that it’s you. It’s fun to share photos with your closest friends, but what is the point of having more than 1,000 photos of yourself for near-strangers to see? Using Flickr to share photos instead of Facebook has a fresh appeal. There are so many aspects of social networking—texting, videochatting, e-mailing, tweeting, talking on AIM—that Facebook seems to only be a recipe for trouble.

The astounding 500 million–plus people active on Facebook is impressive and shows the power of social media in connecting people, but if I only want to be connected to my friends, is a Facebook profile really worth it?

Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things a person can do, even if it’s just for a little while. For a teenage girl to be leaving her best friend for a whopping three and a half weeks is never easy. My best friend, Gadea, goes to boarding school with me and lives in Madrid, Spain, when she’s not at school. I only see her during the school year, and after this year, she will return to Spain to finish the rest of her high school career there. Everyday spent with her now is precious. This is why [ ...continue reading ]]]>

Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things a person can do, even if it’s just for a little while. For a teenage girl to be leaving her best friend for a whopping three and a half weeks is never easy. My best friend, Gadea, goes to boarding school with me and lives in Madrid, Spain, when she’s not at school. I only see her during the school year, and after this year, she will return to Spain to finish the rest of her high school career there. Everyday spent with her now is precious. This is why Gadea departing to Spain and me departing to Connecticut for a three-and-a-half-week Christmas vacation was hard for both of us. Luckily, our computers would keep us in touch.

“I wish I could text you or something … like, we have to plan what times you can talk. You have to message me your hours,” I said in a sad voice, while hugging Gadea in front of the bus. I could tell she was excited to go back to Spain and see all her friends and family, but we both knew we would have loads to catch up on and only slim hours that overlapped to be able to talk. The hours in Spain are drastically different from here, so when I slept late, I would wake up to see six IMs from her saying she missed me, and I needed to wake up and talk to her, but by then she was already offline.

We kept in touch writing on each other’s walls, but I had funny stories I needed to tell her and really, I just missed her—a lot. One night, I was on my computer in my room when I saw she signed on. I jumped up in excitement and we IMed, until she ended up falling asleep on the computer.

Christmas day came, and I left a video on her wall with both my dogs and my family saying hello to hers as they sat around my living room with their breakfast. A few hours later, I received a notification on my blackberry that said, “Gadea Perez de Guzman has recorded a video on your wall” Confused, I walked over to my computer and logged into Facebook. Gadea didn’t have a good enough computer to record videos, so maybe it was a false notification. I looked at my wall and there she was, with a huge grin from ear to ear, smiling and telling me she had received a Macbook for Christmas last night! Filled with joy, I messaged her and told her to get online as soon as she could. Twenty minutes later, she logged on and I sent her a video chat request. From that day on, we would video chat everyday and catch up on what happened that day.

Being able to video chat with someone in the next town, state or even across the country is an amazing feat in technology. The fact that I could see and speak to my best friend through the computer on Christmas day was one of the best presents I received that year. Video chatting is currently very big with teens, and it definitely has its benefits for me, as my friends come from such far-reaching places as Spain, Bermuda, New York, Nigeria, etc. Having the ability to video chat made my Christmas so much more special because I got to see my best friend, who was thousands of miles away, as if she was right there in my living room.

At 7:25 every night I say goodbye to my best friend: my BlackBerry. I slide my phone into the box labeled with my last name in the common room and trudge down the long hallway to my room. At 7:30, my prefect’s voice echoes loudly through the dorm: “Study hall’s in, girls!!” Great.

Now for the worst part. My Internet shuts off. I am stuck sitting uncomfortably at a wooden desk for two hours. Unable to text, Facebook, IM, or video chat until 9:30, when the Internet is back and all is as it should be.

Cruel and [ ...continue reading ]]]>

At 7:25 every night I say goodbye to my best friend: my BlackBerry. I slide my phone into the box labeled with my last name in the common room and trudge down the long hallway to my room. At 7:30, my prefect’s voice echoes loudly through the dorm: “Study hall’s in, girls!!” Great.

Now for the worst part. My Internet shuts off. I am stuck sitting uncomfortably at a wooden desk for two hours. Unable to text, Facebook, IM, or video chat until 9:30, when the Internet is back and all is as it should be.

Cruel and unusual punishment? Every teenage girl’s worst nightmare? Yes and yes. I suffered my whole freshman year for two hours straight every night, disconnected from the social media world. Luckily, at the beginning of my sophomore year we made an amazing discovery.

Most kids at my school, including me, have a Mac, and someone found an application called Bonjour. Bonjour is only accessible via a Mac computer and through the iChat application. When I am at school and connected to the wireless Internet, I can access a buddy list that shows all the students with Macs who are online. It’s like AIM but accessible through Macs only. We all thought it was pretty cool, but we didn’t know just how amazing it was.

One evening I was sitting at my uncomfortable wooden desk when an IM popped up on my screen. I was confused. It was 8:32. This was when I realized that Bonjour worked during study hall! Now every night we all log on and stay connected without the house parents even knowing. Sometimes we even video chat with the boys in the other dorms!

My dorm is insanely strict, and they take study hall very seriously. Being on time is a must, and Bonjour (which of course they found out about) is strictly prohibited from 7:30-9:30 or your computer is taken away for a week. So you have to be very careful.

Bonjour is both rebellious and dangerous, but in my opinion it’s totally worth it. We don’t use it just for meaningless gossip; we do occasionally bring up homework questions and due dates. This is extremely helpful, considering that we are not allowed to leave our rooms during study hall without permission.

In a world where texting, IM, Facebook, Twitter and other connections to the world via the Internet are so alive and constantly used, it’s hard to hold us back! It just goes to show: You can’t stop the social media world, because it’s constantly opening new doors every day.

Posted by Taryn M., age 15, Connecticut

You know that guy you occasionally see around the classroom buildings or running out of his dorm because he’s late to class again. You’re not even sure if he knows your name, but you’ve never put much thought toward it. He’s never done anything to catch your eye. Plus, you have a million and one things to worry about that are more important than some guy you barely notice. If it weren’t for that one unexpected IM, I might have never known Joe Anderson (alias to protect the innocent), my mystery [ ...continue reading ]]]>

You know that guy you occasionally see around the classroom buildings or running out of his dorm because he’s late to class again. You’re not even sure if he knows your name, but you’ve never put much thought toward it. He’s never done anything to catch your eye. Plus, you have a million and one things to worry about that are more important than some guy you barely notice. If it weren’t for that one unexpected IM, I might have never known Joe Anderson (alias to protect the innocent), my mystery man, even existed.

I don’t know what it is about the instant messaging phenomenon. It gives us a weird sense of confidence most of us wouldn’t have face to face. I often catch myself saying rash things over AIM that I would never have had the guts to say in person, or even over the phone. AIM serves as a façade of confidence and a convenient way to talk to people you would normally never be caught dead speaking to. My AIM buddy list consists of my best friends from middle school and the guy I have a crush on, as well as my cousin’s boyfriend, and some of those nerdy kids you don’t talk to in public but who are genuinely nicer than your closest group of friends. You never really expect to ever talk to them, but they still stay on your buddy list.

I had never expected Joe Anderson to even know my name, but things changed in an instant. “Hey Taryn, what’s up?” read the IM that suddenly flashed onto my computer screen. I tried to think of what to say back, but I was stunned, staring at the computer screen as if I had seen a ghost. He was a senior, I was a sophomore. My hands, quivering, darted every which way on my keyboard, typing in meaningless small talk and a couple ha-ha’s now and then. We ended up talking that whole night, until it was lights out. We picked up the conversation the next night in the same spot. This continued for the remainder of the week. One night he helped me through a personal issue, which led me to realize that this was the time to exchange numbers so we could talk at any point during the day, not just from 9:30 until lights out. For a sophomore girl in high school, one-and-a-half hours is not even close to enough time to discuss all the issues. As soon as I knew it we were connected through at least four different technologies: Facebook, texting, iChat, video chat. We talked practically every day, but never once in person.

I know, you’re probably thinking he wanted to talk to me because he likes me, right? Well, Joe has a girlfriend, Kelly (alias to protect the innocent), and she’s as pretty as she is popular. So that couldn’t be the reason. My friends tell me the whole thing is a little creepy, but for some reason, I don’t think it is at all. I occasionally bump into him on campus, but not a word is spoken between us face to face. We’re like best friends while video chatting or texting, but if we see each other in person, it’s as if he never knew my name.

Joe and I have an unspoken code under which we can tell each other anything, and we don’t judge each other for what we have done. The truth is, if we talked in person it would make the situation a lot more awkward, and I wouldn’t be as honest as I am over chat or texting. The mask of communicating online and through texts is a way to escape from the awkwardness of truth and feel more confident about yourself. Knowing that you have someone you can tell anything without them thinking any less of you gives you self-confidence, and we all know that’s what every teenage girl needs.