"Social Networks: Pros and Cons" by Ana de la Gándara González (1º A Bach)

Nowadays, in the 21st century, the great technological advances provide us with lots of facilities in many areas, as for example in communication. Thanks to technology, there are numerous social networks and software programs that allow us to communicate with other people who are at the other end of the country or even on the opposite side of the world. Such thing was unthinkable a couple of decades ago.

I can name a lot of these programs and applications, like Skype, Tango or Facetime (for those who have an iphone) but in addition to these, there are many social networks on the internet that allow us to communicate through messages and photos, such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, or Snapchat. 

There are many advantages on these networks as they allow us to communicate with other people on the net, without having to pay any telephone bills, only the price of the internet. But also, there are a number of problems involved with the use of these so called social networks. The main one is bullying, that is to say, the ability to psychologically attack someone via internet without any physical contact. Cyberbullying is a very common problem in adolescents, because today any of them has a mobile phone to have access to these networks and can harass or laugh at someone with the only objective of humiliating him or her. There have been numerous campaigns to fight bullying, presented in schools in order to educate the children on the psychological problems that it may cause. For example in 2010, Cartoon Network organized a campaign against bullying in the United States, with the name of "Enough about bullying, don't stay quiet".

In recent years several movies have been filmed with the same educational purpose. They show how bullying develops, often by mocking at the way someone dresses or talks, the person's musical likes or their economical difficulties. One example of these films is "Cyberbully" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk_YSO0py7s) starring Emily Osment, which is about a girl, Taylor, who creates a profile on a social network and begins to suffer harassment on the net after her little brother got into her account and made a false publication.  

To prevent all these crimal behaviours, police officers give talks about bullying in scools in order to educate children about the impact of cyberbullying and its legal consequences, since many teenagers believe that they can write and say anything on the net, when it is not the case.

In conclusion, I want to remark that new technologies make our social lives easier but also bring lots of inconvenience if you aren't careful and responsible enough, especially among teenagers.