On Virtual Socialization: The Good and Bad

Facebook, myspace, twitter,tumblr,yahoo messenger, multiply. Are you familiar with this names? Maybe you also know friendster? Well that is a very old one. I guess you know most of the names mentioned and most probably you have accounts in two or three of those. That is not a surprise. Those websites are used by majority of the people in our society right now. Even the lolo's and lola's and some of the younger generations (as young as elementary students) with an access on the world wide web can easily create their own account. Moreover, the websites mentioned are the social networking sites where everyone is familiar to use. We can access and connect with different people residing in different places all over the world. Cool right? Through this social networking site, especially facebook, you could connect or reconnect with your old time friends who you lost contact with for several years.

Reconnecting with old friends is not the only purpose of this sites. It also helps us in meeting people with the same interest and hobby just like us. Would you believe that sometimes through this sites, you can make a friend even if you had not met them in person? That is what I've experienced in an old social networking site, which is friendster. I joined a group ,where in fans of my favorite author in precious hearts pocket book (a romance novel here in the Philippines) created. In that same group I had a chat with "Kathe", a girl with the same interest and same age like I am and she is living in Cebu. It was 2009 when I first talked to her yet until now we maintain to have our communication through facebook (we haven't met yet).

This sites made our world wider through making friends. Some of the account users can express or even change their personalities when they are in the web. For example, a shy and plain girl can express her jolly and fun side in the internet when she talks to other users of the site. A guy could also have a courage to talk to the girl he likes through social networking sites. Technically, this virtual socialization made it easy for everyone to socialize with each other.

It also helps us in expressing ourselves and our thoughts. However, this also increases the chances of getting us hurt. Other people uses this materials to deceive or hurt innocent people.If bullying is present in school and other work place, you could also find it in the social networking sites.With good things, bad things also accompanies it. Some even uses personal information and pictures of other people and use it on their own gain (identity theft).

Many things could happen in online social network, we just need to be careful and be cautious in selecting the information that we will encode in the web to prevent harm in the future.