Social networking sites, in recent years have become increasingly popular. It could be argued that social networking sites connect people and creates virtual societies which enable people to feel included rather than excluded. However a stronger and more concerning argument is that the more popular sites such as Facebook are isolating people and ‘dumbing down’ its users.
Social networking sites such as MSN Messenger, Twitter and Facebook, are sites that people use in order to stay connected to one another. This makes it easier for people to talk to one another. In 2009 Twitter recorded that there were 2.7 million tweets being made every day. Status updates on Facebook and tweets on Twitter, creates a sense of freedom of speech, as people are allowed to express their views about anything they want openly. Also sites such as Twitter, which is popular for its celebrity users, somewhat abolishes the hierarchy of the elitist at the top and the general public at the bottom, as people of all backgrounds and lifestyles could sign up to become a part of the network.
Facebook was created in 2004 by a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. The site was initially created for Harvard students to make them connect to one another however; this website was then used by students from a wide range of universities, including those from other countries. Rapidly the number of Facebook users increased and now there are more than 400,000 users just in America. With people connecting via the web, people have willingly decided to segregate themselves from the rest of the world. Sherry Turkle, a theorist said: “Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber- reality is a poor imitation of the real world”. This supports the idea that in fact, social networking sites do rather isolate people which, this fades away the physical interaction people used to have.
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