Social Networking Websites’ Positive and Negative Aspects    [15-04-2011] These days, a growing number of people are using social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Even many teenagers and children have their own accounts. These websites are helpful in many ways. You can keep in touch with your friends and relatives easily. You can also make new friends and meet new people online through these social networking pages. However, there are some negative aspects as well. It is true that social networking service (SNS) have many positive aspects. It is a great way to stay connected with people. You can upload your pictures and write stories about your daily life on your page. You can also visit your friends’ websites to see how they are doing. Through social networking websites, you can contact with people anytime, anywhere. SNS also helps you stay connected with the world. You can get useful information very quickly from them. For example, Twitter and Facebook were very useful for the people in Japan when the country was hit by a mega earthquake and tsunami on March 11. They got information about the situation quickly through these websites. However, as everything has both bright and dark sides, SNS has some negative sides as well. When using social networking websites, you have to be very careful. This is because social media consists of personal information. Your personal information can be misused for bad purposes by bad people. Therefore, you should not provide important information to these websites. Do not post your personal information, address or cell phone number. You should change your passwords often, too. Social networking websites are often used to harass people, too. Some teens leave mean messages on the web pages of people they don’t like. It can lead to serious problems. The victims can suffer from depression. In severe cases, some teens even try to kill themselves. In addition, some teens can also suffer from low self-esteem just by looking at other people’s Facebook web pages. If they don’t receive many friend requests, they feel sad, lonely, and depressed. This is because they think they are not popular like other people. SNS can be very useful in many ways, but we should be careful in using social networking sites. Spending too much time on the websites is not very good for your mental and physical health. Let’s use them constructively rather than destructively!     출처: 어린이 영자신문 키즈타임즈 (www.kidstimes.net)