Social Networking

Sooooo I had to do some writing on why Social Networking is a good thing for Tearaway. It's not actually that easy to argue! I was on a word restriction and it was a debate-like piece with another really cool Tearaway writer called Tommy, who lives in the Hawkes Bay. We had some fascinating phone calls though most of the stuff we discussed never quite made it into the debate. Here's my rather horrid, typical-teenager side of the writing. I swear I really do usually write better...

"Social Networking, plain and simple, is a truly advantageous tool of the modern age. The bottom line is that despite how much I like to fault it- as most people do- I’ve still got my Facebook. So what is it that keeps us stuck on it? In all honesty, just using some specific examples can underline its usefulness, and although I admit that they may come across as cliché, there’s very valid reasoning behind them becoming so.

Firstly are international friends. My parents were awesome this year and let my brother and I have our pre-ball get-together at our house. Inevitably, lots of photos got taken of everyone dressed up. The next day Mum got an email from a very close family friend who moved to France to live a good number of years ago, saying how lovely we all looked. What the?! Oh, Facebook! For a friend on the other side of the world to get a smile from still being able to watch us grow up, that’s quite magic.

I’ve got another draw card on its way now. My seventh form year has been filled with absolutely wonderful friends (aided by none other than, you guessed it, Facebook), but as we all leave school everyone’s going in literally all directions. Whether it’s elsewhere in New Zealand or even around the world, there are a lot of people to be missed and I’m positive this goes for everyone. Social Networking is going to make it so much easier to keep up with all these people- it’s something our parents never had and in the future it will lead to a very strongly connected world indeed. Already it’s proven its worth by keeping us in touch with friends at other schools, and this can only continue as we begin life in the larger world.

What’s more, there has never been such an efficient and easy way to market ourselves as we go into the workforce. Whether we set our profiles up to accentuate our strengths or use it to keep contacts who may be useful in the future, there isn’t a doubt that the ‘tool’ of online social networking, in this day and age, is quite indispensible. It almost seems that if you do without you’ll fall behind, but if you use it you can very much propel yourself through the world. 

Now, it’s coming up to exam time and I had conformed to the current trend by deactivating my Facebook account in order to concentrate. By the way, that’s another positive- if it all gets too much you can remove the distraction without deleting it. Anyway, preparing for this piece I needed to talk people into doing the Vox Pop. Reactivating my account, all of ten minutes later I had the three responses and snapshots seen here with almost no effort on my part."


In other news, here's a great vid my friend found: