2,689 friends. That’s how many friends it said that he had on Facebook. How is that even possible? Do you think that he’s actually got friends with every single one of them in real life? I’m sure he probably knows some of them like actual true friends, but the rest, could be complete strangers. What do you think? Do social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace help or hinder true friendships?

Social Networking sites are good and bad. Keeping in touch with friends from other states is one of the pros of having an account. Now days, a lot of people don’t do the activities they used to before they had an account on a site. Many people go straight onto the computer. This can distract people from getting things done. It can probably even affect people’s grades, amount of sleep, and social interaction. Just by talking to other people on the internet, takes away from the people you should be spending time with, when they are right in front of you.

I once heard a story about a girl that did a project at her school with Facebook. Her class created an account for a boy that didn’t exist. They friend requested as many people as they could off of “his” profile, and by the end of the week, he had 864 friends. So many people were willing to become friends with a complete stranger. This could lead to so many bad outcomes. There are predators on the internet that could be doing the very same thing on these sites and then finding out all they want about you. In ways like this, social networking sites are very dangerous, especially if you’re not careful with privacy settings, who you talk to, and who you accept as friends.

By having a site like Facebook, you usually don’t talk to people the same way you would in person. Sometimes you say things you don’t mean, and it can create problems in and out of the cyber world. I’m not saying that all of it is bad, but too much of anything isn’t a good thing. If you have some kind of profile or Twitter or any kind of internet site account, I challenge you to not use it for one week and see how much your life changes. How much time you would save, the people you’ll talk to in person, the fun things you will do other than being on the computer, and getting things done quicker, without any distractions.