Earlier this year, Egypt erupted in protests. Around January, nearly 10,000 people began filling the streets of Cairo to demonstrate against the government. They marched through the streets demanding the [ ...continue reading ]]]>

When teenagers are looking for articles on current events or the latest scandal in the news, it is not very likely they will sit at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. Although the newspaper has been very popular to adults for centuries, the new way to reach teenagers—or anybody for that matter—is through the Internet. People all over the world want their news, and they want it fast.

Earlier this year, Egypt erupted in protests. Around January, nearly 10,000 people began filling the streets of Cairo to demonstrate against the government. They marched through the streets demanding the resignation of their longtime president Hosni Mubarak. Inspired by Tunisian demonstrators, Egypt’s protesters took full advantage of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to advocate, inform and organize their actions. However, around Jan. 27, the Egyptian government banned the Internet. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were being blocked to make sure that teenagers and young activists would no longer be able to organize or communicate via the Internet. It was an attempt to make it nearly impossible to communicate in Egypt—both within the country and with the rest of the world.

With the realization that teenagers have the power to spread information to other teenagers from across the world, Egypt was smart to disable such networking services. Such a blockage was, of course, unfair to the residents and protesters in Egypt, but it reinforces the notion that the power of social media dominates any other type of communication. It is the fastest way to get information across to the world and the one service that will (almost) always help you find what you are looking for. The government’s action not only served to restrict activists in Egypt but it also demonstrated the importance of social media and the power it has in our world.

Image taken from CreativeCommons.org

Facebook screenshot by Jelene Morris http://www.flickr.com/photos/jelene/2715774596/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Facebook is a place to chill, comment on friends’ pictures and update your status according to what you did during the day, what’s happening tomorrow or exactly how you feel right in that moment. So, according to some, it’s nothing more than teens attempting to catch others’ attention purely out of boredom! Check out this article to see the latest thoughts.

An interesting approach to the world of Facebook, this article has bits with which I agree—and that is the unnecessary exaggeration of letters and [ ...continue reading ]]]>

Facebook screenshot by Jelene Morris http://www.flickr.com/photos/jelene/2715774596/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Facebook is a place to chill, comment on friends’ pictures and update your status according to what you did during the day, what’s happening tomorrow or exactly how you feel right in that moment. So, according to some, it’s nothing more than teens attempting to catch others’ attention purely out of boredom! Check out this article to see the latest thoughts.

An interesting approach to the world of Facebook, this article has bits with which I agree—and that is the unnecessary exaggeration of letters and constant use of “lol” that many teenagers use. However, being a teenager myself and looking at it from that perspective, I disagree with the idea of it being a novel we are all writing.

Facebook is a place where people communicate with others whom they may not see very often and no doubt a place where you update close friends whom you probably do see daily. So what if we comment on what our day has been like or what we’ve got planned tomorrow? These are things we would tell our friends in real life, so why not announce it to them all? Granted, you might not know everyone on your friends list personally, but Facebook can be a place to get to know them—or, if not, what’s the harm in keeping them there? They’re not strangers, right?

I am aware that some teenagers get carried away and spill their life stories within a few sentences and more often than not use a few cursing words; these are the things that should be written or complained about. But commenting on teenagers’ approach to Facebook as being callous and just a place of screaming and being overenthusiastic is the complete opposite of how we more mature teenagers approach it: a place of social networking with those whom we do not see much and where we can chat and chill with friends.

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?

With all of millions of people participating in social-networking sites and programs today, it can be hard to remember sometimes that this common hobby can still be dangerous. You may think that the only people who are able to view your information are the “friends” on your page, but that is a common misconception. Child predators, police officials and the government all have their ways of accessing your pages—putting you at risk of possibly attracting unwanted attention or, at worst, getting busted.

Facebook, for instance, is a great way to meet new people, reconnect with old friends [ ...continue reading ]]]>

With all of millions of people participating in social-networking sites and programs today, it can be hard to remember sometimes that this common hobby can still be dangerous. You may think that the only people who are able to view your information are the “friends” on your page, but that is a common misconception. Child predators, police officials and the government all have their ways of accessing your pages—putting you at risk of possibly attracting unwanted attention or, at worst, getting busted.

Facebook, for instance, is a great way to meet new people, reconnect with old friends and stay in touch with people from out of town, but you never really know who you are communicating with behind that computer screen. I personally think that putting information on Facebook such as your telephone number and e-mail address are far too personal. You never know who will try to contact you, and what they will do with that contact information. Finding the right balance between letting others know what is going on in your life but still staying safe and private at the same time is key to not putting yourself in danger.

One test for knowing when enough is enough: Is there anything on your social-networking sites or pages that you don’t want the entire world to see? You may think a comment or picture is deleted just by pressing the “delete” button, but trust me, it is in cyberspace for good. So the next time you put a new piece of info on your page, just make sure you’re comfortable with you and—potentially—the whole world viewing it.

I sign on everyday, and the first thing I look at is my homepage, which gives a glimpse of my friend’s latest additions to their profiles. Most of the time there are pictures added from the birthday bash the past weekend, or a day at the beach with friends. Everybody adds Facebook albums and tags each other in pictures for everyone to see what they have been up [ ...continue reading ]]]>
To say the least, Facebook is taking over! Almost everyone has a Facebook account,
especially, it seems, teenagers and young adults, but the age ranges from middle school to grandparents!

I sign on everyday, and the first thing I look at is my homepage, which gives a glimpse of my friend’s latest additions to their profiles. Most of the time there are pictures added from the birthday bash the past weekend, or a day at the beach with friends. Everybody adds Facebook albums and tags each other in pictures for everyone to see what they have been up to.

As I was going through old photo albums it occurred to me, am I going to have photo albums? Where are my pictures going to be in 35 years? On the Internet? We hardly print pictures nowadays as we simply add them to Facebook in a virtual photo album. My friend responded, “Well, they aren’t going to delete Facebook, so they will always be online.”

Is our generation going to be showing our photos on the computer? It is so cool how technology develops; my grandparents had their black-and white photographs, and I’m busy uploading to a virtual photo album with one click of a mouse.

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.

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” —Dorothea Lange

Everyone wishes she or he could turn back time, revisit the good memories and erase the bad. Even though this is not possible, pictures are the closest thing we have to it. When you look at a picture, it opens a flood of memories from that moment, and they are forever captured. Photography, one of my greatest passions, has assisted me in capturing and sharing some of my best and worst memories. In the rare event I don’t have my camera, I rely [ ...continue reading ]]]>

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” —Dorothea Lange

Everyone wishes she or he could turn back time, revisit the good memories and erase the bad. Even though this is not possible, pictures are the closest thing we have to it. When you look at a picture, it opens a flood of memories from that moment, and they are forever captured. Photography, one of my greatest passions, has assisted me in capturing and sharing some of my best and worst memories. In the rare event I don’t have my camera, I rely on my phone to help me remember. My BlackBerry captures, saves and shares some of my greatest memories on the go.

“Taryn, get up; we’re going to the park!” my dad ordered as I awoke and glanced at the clock to see the time. It was 9:30 a.m., and I hated getting up that early on a Saturday, but I reluctantly dressed and trudged downstairs. Upon arriving at the park, my brother and my dad claimed they had to have proper “walking sticks” before we could begin our expedition. I had left my camera in the car because I had to walk my youngest dog, Mulligan. The sun shone through the breaks of the branches on the trees, and there stood my dad. With my dog Kerry on a leash in his one hand and a curved wooden walking stick in the other, my dad looked ridiculously silly.

I knew I had to capture this, so I took a picture and immediately mobile-uploaded it to Facebook via my BlackBerry. By the time we had left the park, five of my friends had liked the photo and six people had commented on it, including my aunt. Mobile upload is extremely handy, especially when something funny or embarrassing happens. In my brother’s case, this would be an everyday affair.

My brother is the exact opposite of me. I am into sports, music and photography; he is into science, building things, and singing and acting. He is always putting on a show for anyone who’s willing to watch, and he’s not afraid to speak his mind. While getting ready to go to the movies with my immediate family, my brother got into the car wearing black sweatpants, a gray long-sleeve shirt and 3-D glasses on his face. I blankly stared at him, waiting for him to laugh and take them off, but he just stared back and said, “I knew you’d like them!” with a sly grin on his face. The truth is, he was being totally serious. Baffled, I looked at my mom, who only giggled, as if to say boys will be boys, and my dad fist-bumped him and said, “Nice shades, pal!” I knew it was going to be a long night.

We decided to go to a restaurant before the movie to grab a bite to eat, and Jimmy marched in confidently with the 3-D glasses still on his face. “Table for four, please!” he said while standing on his tippytoes to be seen over the massive counter. The waitress came to the table staring at him funnily, and he confessed, “I can’t believe how many people are jealous of this baby!”—implying everyone was after his 3-D glasses. I can assure you, nobody was. He picked up his menu and began studying it, when my dad asked him if he could have a pair. My dad always takes his side. Jimmy smiled and said, “I THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER ASK, DAD!” Now both my brother and my dad sat behind their menus sporting 3-D glasses. I quickly pulled out my phone, took a picture of them and mobile-uploaded it. The caption read: “This is my family…”

Mobile uploading has its advantages and disadvantages: You’re able to take funny pictures of others, but at the same time, someone could upload something of you. Nevertheless, it is a great way to capture memories on the go when you’re without a camera. The fact that the pictures can go straight to Facebook is even better. I do mobile upload occasionally, taking an instant out of time, and remembering it forever.

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My Facebook inbox is constantly full of messages sent to my whole family by my dad. Messages consist of “Congratulations to Reuben [my little brother] on his band’s first gig [Vapor Friday]. They were great!” or “Happy Birthday Cousin Jordan!” We discuss family vacations, Thanksgiving plans and any other news. This is the only reason I am friends with my dad on Facebook, hence the limited profile. [ ...continue reading ]]]>

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My Facebook inbox is constantly full of messages sent to my whole family by my dad. Messages consist of “Congratulations to Reuben [my little brother] on his band’s first gig [Vapor Friday]. They were great!” or “Happy Birthday Cousin Jordan!” We discuss family vacations, Thanksgiving plans and any other news. This is the only reason I am friends with my dad on Facebook, hence the limited profile. (Sorry, Dad…). I felt too bad ignoring his friend request, so I accepted him and put him on a limited profile. This way, I control exactly what he can and can’t see. Yes, this may be a little offensive, but as said on the “Today Show”, it feels like my parents are reading my personal diary when they look at my profile. That doesn’t necessarily mean that my profile is inappropriate. Parents just don’t understand the teenage world.
Facebook is supposed to be a safe haven where all of my friends and I can connect in one single place. We laugh at funny pictures together while not being physically together. We plan events, join groups and simply chat about anything we like. Except now that parents are joining Facebook, we can’t chat about anything we like anymore. We need to be more careful about what we say and how we say it. I understand that Facebook is a perfect place for adults to connect with people they haven’t seen or even spoken to in 30 years. Sometimes I just wish that there was a separate place for adults and teens to connect.

P.S.: Parents—don’t be offended if we don’t accept your friend request. I promise it is NOT personal!

“Dad can you take us to the movies tonight?” “Mom, can you take me to the mall for a few hours?”After a mere 16 years, these words will all be put to rest when you finally pass that driving test! The freedom you have when you get your license will open up a whole new opportunity for plans, taking care of errands and running out at the spur of the moment to be with your friends. But wait, we can’t forget that you actually have to get your license before all of this can happen!

The six or [ ...continue reading ]]]>

“Dad can you take us to the movies tonight?” “Mom, can you take me to the mall for a few hours?”After a mere 16 years, these words will all be put to rest when you finally pass that driving test! The freedom you have when you get your license will open up a whole new opportunity for plans, taking care of errands and running out at the spur of the moment to be with your friends. But wait, we can’t forget that you actually have to get your license before all of this can happen!

The six or so weeks leading up to take the test can be even more nerve-wracking than the test itself. You think you may have only told your closest friends when your test is, but before you know it, the entire school is wishing you good luck. So at this point, you think that it will make no difference by putting it on your Facebook status. You receive 15 comments on it, and 20 “likes” from various friends and acquaintances. You keep getting more and more excited as you count down from six weeks, to three weeks, to five days. Now, that just increased the pressure to pass by about one million percent! You also may start to see who is “sucking up” a little bit to you, and who is being extra friendly in the hallway—thinking in the back of their minds that they can hopefully get a ride with you sometime soon.

So you have the biggest weekend plans of the year riding, no pun intended, on this test. The entire school is biting its fingers waiting to hear the results, and you cannot wait a second longer to have all of the freedom—and the car keys. But before you can say the word “go,” you fail.

So, what now? I guess it’s back to asking mom and dad to give up part of their weekend to drive you around, and some new people might stop saying “hi” to you in the hall. But you also have to face more than 500 Facebook friends and IM’s from people who are saying sorry. Little do they know, they are only making it worse. You feel like the whole world is driving by. But then you slowly start to get your personality back and realize that you can schedule another appointment. You just have to hope for lucky No. 2.

You may be surprised to hear that I don’t even have my permit yet, but one of my best friends had an experience just like it. A friend so close that you find yourself feeling like her life is yours, and yours is hers. She was in tears when she didn’t get her license. There was so much hype about it, which made it even worse when she didn’t pass. Fortunately, she has already scheduled another appointment and will hopefully be more ready than ever this time.

So, some lessons my friend learned from this experience for next time: Do not tell a single soul the next time you schedule a test. Be underconfident, just in case you may not pass again. And throw all of your nerves out the window before getting anywhere near the driving center. I hope my friend keeps these things in the back of her mind. All we can do is hope for the best for the next test. After all, we both have a lot riding on this one because I can’t even qualify for my permit until July!

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