| Over the last 30 years advanced technologies and new media have had a great utilitarian effect on our lives. Cellular telephones have made people more accessible and the Internet provides 24-hour-a-day worldwide connectivity to information sources, shopping and entertainment. However, with so much at our disposal from personal computers and mobile phones, there is less and less need for shopping at a stores, researching at libraries or talking to people face to face. While there are great benefits to these different media, they have made society much more isolated than ever before. Social Networking Services (SNS) like Facebook serve to facilitate a social interaction in an online environment, but it is important to note that while many use these SNS to maintain offline relationships online, there is a generation growing up using these online services to forge new relationships. In an online world where a "friend" is defined simply as someone who has access to a user's online profile and ending a relationship is as easy as "unfriending" or "blocking" another user, this paper examines the teen online environment and will question the development of their interpersonal skills as they learn to forge relationships not by person to person interactivity, but rather under the guidelines and security features of SNS like Facebook. |
