Through recent years, social networking has been redesigned. The internet has formed a whole new way to meet people, find family and friends, and stay in the loop with your buddies. I remember when I was a sophomore in High School, MySpace became the newest and coolest thing since AOL Instant Messenger. You could upload pictures, comment on your friends’ posts, and listen to your local bands. When Facebook was developed, it blew MySpace out of the water. I am sure we all know how Facebook changed our lives, especially my generation. It’s almost like an addiction now, many of my friends regularly are on the Facebook App on their I phone and updating their statuses constantly.
Yet no one really talks about the “dark side” of Facebook. Facebook can be used to destroy reputations and lives. In my neighborhood of South Philadelphia, a group of girls created an anonymous Facebook with the name “Burn Book”. The name referencing the movie Mean Girls, where they write awful things about fellow teenagers in copybook. Well now, the Burn Book has evolved, and is on a website that anyone anywhere in the world can view. One day I stumbled upon it, and was appalled to see the stuff that these girls were writing! “ Burnys Back - Michele Kohlenberg iz presleys lil follower.....shes 1 of da bestest slutz in philly michele fucked over half of SP......dirty ass bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I know to these teenage girls these words don’t seem like they can hurt someone that bad, but in reality they can. Being a girl growing up in South Philly before this Burn Book, I still would come home crying from school because girls are just so damn mean. Now I couldn’t even imagine how some of these girls feel with things being written on the internet for everyone to see. Not only is it hurtful, but its embarrassing. Yet, the bigger question is, why is no one trying to stop this internet bullying? We have already seen that the worst can happen with teenagers and bullying, and nothing is really being done about this huge issue. Lately I have seen commercials and ads on television trying to make people aware of the problem, but something else needs to be done. A social networking tool should not be used to destroy lives.
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