As the Internet world is going to widen, there is few people who use the Internet and most people have their personal website such as facebook, myspace and cyworld. It is very useful to share their daily lives. Also, it is so helpful for people to say, “Hello.”, to people who do not see in the real world. The personal websites are just like a net to connect people around us. We can put our photos on the wall and write what we want to say simply. We can share out thoughts with other people easily. We can call the personal websites and social websites SNS. For those reasons, SNS is going very popular. Especially, I want to focus on Facebook this time. When we see people who do not have their SNS, we even ask, “Why don’t you have a facebook?” In Korea, there is the proverb; too much is as bad as too little. Nowadays, SNS has many negative effects to us. Simply, I can list up; lack of privacy, the possibility that someone’s SNS can be the target of attacking and addiction.
I think lack of privacy is the biggest one. We can make friends very easily by just click. At this point, I want to talk about mutual friends. It means facebook let us know our mutual friends around us such as a friend’s friend. Even though I do not know someone, he can come in my facebook and check pictures and what I have written on my wall. Surely, if I blocked my facebook to make people whom I do not know not be able to check my writings and pictures, the lack of privacy can be solved. However, we are using SNS by smart phone nowadays. It is hard to control by phone. In other words, while we do not recognize, some strangers can look over my facebook.
Another problem is that someone’s facebook can be the target of attacking from other people. Specifically, celebrities’ facebook can be the example of it. Now, we have a right to talk about what I am thinking of anything. Especially, in Korea, if a celebrity put his thoughts about politic on his wall, many journalists write article about it. From that, the celebrity’s writing is going to be hotter and an issue. At this point, someone think that his thoughts are in an opposite way or do not match with their thoughts, they are changed into enemy and attack his writing, even him. Anyone can write and put their thought on his SNS. However, with the reason why some writers are famous, their SNS can be the target from some people and they can get hurt. Also, I think that it seems to take away their right.
Also, lots of young children are using facebook. In facebook, there are many kinds of social games. It is hard for young children to control themselves. They are doing facebook for a long time and after that, they play the facebook social games. Addiction of facebook is not useful to them. However, social games are making them addicted to another thing additionally. Not even children, many adults are also addicted to SNS nowadays. Everyone has smart phone. If you are in the bus stop, I bet you will easily be able to see people who using their smart phone especially doing facebook by their smart phone.
Of course, everything has its positive and negative things. However, SNS is already a big part of our life. I think it is very difficult to get rid of SNS from our days. As that, we need to know how to use wisely. As I said, there are problems of facebook’s structure and our attitudes. People’s every information is very important. It cannot be measured. Facebook should think about it and regard it as the most valuable. Also, SNS is not the way to be bound like a duty, but the way to enjoy out daily life. We should think the way how to use it wisely by ourselves.
Sora,
This is close to okay, structurally, though your “thesis” and the reasons you give would be better in a single sentence, to make a strong thesis. Also, you need to restate your thesis at the end, but you don’t. Also, you don’t use a very effective hook, and the structure of your body paragraphs doesn’t follow the structure we looked at in class, of TOPIC SENTENCE -> EXPANSION -> RETURN TO TOPIC SENTENCE THEME.
These things are necessary for a good 5-paragraph essay. However, I want to turn to your arguments, and critique them.
Your first argument is that there are privacy problems in facebook. Well, this is true… if, like many people, you’re not familar with the privacy settings in Facebook, and how you, as a user, can control them. (This seems to be a very common problem, among both older users and even younger users, in Korea.) You can control how much of your profile is visible using settings, and as for people seeing your public communications — this is a feature, not a flaw. All you need to do is think before posting, and send anything private as a private message. In other words, to some degree the problems you’re discussing are problems with users not using the software intelligently, not problems with the software. (Sort of like saying kitchen knives are dangerous, so we need better kitchen knives. The best kitchen knives are dangerous, because the best kitchen knives are very sharp. You need to know how to use a kitchen knife, is all… and if you don’t know how, the solution is to learn, or to get out of the kitchen.)
As for your second argument, this again may not be so much a problem with Facebook as with users. What you describe fits especially with the behavior of Korean netizens. While we have “trolls” in the English-speaking blogosphere, they are usually solitary and more of an occasional problem. The Korean internet seems to have a more constant, and high-level, problem with bad behavior by “netizens” online. I’d suggest that this means there’s some other problem — a social problem in Korea — that needs to get dealt with. (After all, netizens behave badly outside of Facebook too, don’t they?)
Finally, the tiresome flailing about regarding the vulnerability of children, or of all people, to “addiction” to computers is questionable. I know that Korean newspapers love to cite “researchers” who claim that gaming is “addictive” but I’m afraid if you cast your net a little wider — looking at global research — a pattern emerges that is familiar: research tends to be funded either by gaming companies and fans, which says gaming is not addictive; and it is funded by people who hate gaming, and want to prove it is addictive to get political control of it. It’s obvious that part of the reason Korean society is so anxious about computer/internet/gaming addiction is because these are things older people don’t like or understand, and which younger people do like or understand. There are other, far more addictive (and destructive) things available freely in Korean society — cigarettes and hard alcohol, for example — but there is no panic about those. Meanwhile, a lot of interesting research suggests that if people are gaming a lot, they are doing it for a reason — rather than assuming people do it because of addiction, trying to understand *why* they’re gaming so much, what they get out of it, might be a better way to understand the process or situation.
Consider this comparable argument: as a Westerner, I’ve noticed that Korean culture tends to push people towards being together in groups. This, I’ve noticed, has made it more difficult for individuals to pursue more unusual interests: if one has to get all of one’s friends to agree to an outing on a Friday night, then one will end up doing the thing that everyone likes… which makes it harder to get into indie music, or to go a a traditional Korean music concert, or to sign up for skydiving classes. Why do people spend time in groups? Well, when we are with people who make us feel happy, our brains release more endoprhins into our bloodstream. But it would be ridiculous to accuse Koreans (those who prefer to hang out in groups) of being addicted to endorphins, wouldn’t it? That would be silly, even if (in my opinion) that higher level of group-dependency makes it hard for new entertainment, arts, and pop culture to develop here. To just label it “addiction” is silly. It’s similar with gaming, Facebook, or whatever: instead of labeling it addiction, it makes sense to try understand why people do something, what benefits they believe they get from it, and then to talk about its negative effects.