Teens find own space on the web

Enterprise Correspondent

clydenews@bizwoh.rr.com

In the past few years, teens all over America have been swept with the craze of different Internet communities.

Locally, sites such as MySpace and Facebook are just as popular as they are nationwide. Many of the students at Clyde Senior High School are familiar with the idea of these online networks.

Clyde High School junior Alesha Celek is a member of MySpace. She joined because many of her friends were already members and she wanted to be connected.

"My favorite thing is that I can talk with friends that I don't normally see everyday and keep in touch with them." Although she likes the idea of MySpace, Celek feels that some people obsess over their sites and spend too much time on them.

Celek also noted that MySpace allows each person to filter who contacts them.

"Every person has their own say on who they talk to, what they post, and how much personal information they display. Yes, there are people who aren't truthful and will try to say they're someone they're not, but that's everywhere, not just MySpace."

Another junior at Clyde, Cody Balsizer, is also aware of the social networking trend. He is a likes MySpace and is also a member of a lesser-known site called Quarterlife. Even though Balsizer enjoys both networks, he said he prefers MySpace because many Clyde students are active on the site and it's also more user-friendly. His favorite things to do online are messaging his friends and browsing through other members' sites.

"I first became interested in MySpace because of my friends, and I wanted to have a site too. I learned about Quarterlife from the TV show," Balsizer added.

"Quarterlife is a social networking site dedicated to finding a person's interests and allowing them to share their experiences and feelings with other members," he explained.

"Quarterlife is unique, because it also has a small Internet film series that tries to characterize the feelings expressed by the site's users. The show was moved to YouTube, where it gained popularity and was then picked up by NBC and ran for several episodes."

Molly McCoy, a sophomore at Clyde, is a member of MySpace and also Facebook.

"I think that sites like MySpace are a good place for friends to be able to communicate with each other," she commented. "But then again, bad things can happen if you're not careful."

McCoy only adds people as friends online if she knows them; she has never met anyone over the Internet. For the most part, she uses these websites to keep in touch with friends and family.

Although McCoy said she loves the idea of being able to use sites like this, she commented that less personal information should be used when dealing with the Internet.

"In the past, people have lied to me, which is why it's important to be cautious," she pointed out. "I have about 295 friends on MySpace," she said. One of her favorite things to do on her webpage is commenting those people, which means sending a short message to someone that can be displayed on the other person's site. Usually, McCoy logs into Facebook or MySpace everyday to stay connected with the people she knows.

Clyde student web pages make up only a small fraction of how many people are actually active in the online communities.

MySpace, geared toward high school students, has an estimated 70 million users on several continents. Facebook. com is another leading competitor with an estimated 42 million users.

Additionally, there are currently about 300 different social networking sites in existence.

Stephanie Hetrick, a 2006 Clyde Senior High School graduate, is in her second year of college at Kettering University. Although she likes Facebook the best, Hetrick is also a member of MySpace and a website for her sorority.

"I like Facebook, because there aren't as many advertisements as there are on other sites. It is also used for publicizing events. Most of the administration and students from Kettering use it, which is convenient."

"I'm on Facebook at least 10 times a day," she commented. "It's nice because I can talk to friends living far away and our sorority can use it for recruitment. We can post notifications for upcoming events, contests, and other things."

Despite all the benefits of being connected, there is a downfall with allowing other people to view posted information. Hetrick said, "Sometimes Facebook is really interesting, because you find out a lot about other people just by looking at their sites. Most of the time, relationships aren't official until they're "Facebook official.""

The CHS alumna also commented that what people put on the Internet plays a big role in how employers view possible employees. "Employers definitely check people's profiles on Facebook, MySpace, or any similar site. A lot of companies look you up to see how different a person is in real life than they are at work. Some people put too much of their personal lives on their web pages."

She recommended that a user limit what they post online.