Social networking

In the article “Is Social Networking a Waste of Time” written by Bernhard Warner, he shows up multiple pros and cons of social networking.  Only telling us a couple of cons such as: 6.5 billion dollars of revenue lost in the British industry because of time spent on sites such as Facebook and Myspace, and students in school spending as much time as 30 minutes per day on these sites instead of listening to their instructor.  As for pros, he tells us that his former students have used these sites for good things including to promote their online newspaper, build and promote projects on fighting poverty, organizing music gigs, and coordinating meet ups for political rallies.  Although I also believe these are good reasons that social networking is not a waste of time, I disagree with Bernhard Warner because I feel the cons out weigh the pros he listed to support social networking to not be a waste of time.

        The reason I feel that his cons make social networking feel like a waste of time is because if a company is losing 6.5 billion dollars due to their employees focusing more on Facebook then getting things done, this is causing products such as cell phones, computers, and even food products to increase in price due to the companies losing money.  He also says students spend as much as 30 or more minutes on these websites during school.  The amount of information they are losing, such as important due dates of a paper that they may not have heard was due because they were posting a status could result in failing a class.  To add to his cons list, kids today are not the same kids as they were 30 years ago before social networking was around.  Kids now don’t want to leave the house.  Countless amounts of times have I listened to my sister say “I’m bored”, when she has every possible gaming system, ipods, TV channel, cell phone, and access to any website, including Facebook.  I feel that in my parent’s day, they never complained.  They would go outside and make their own games.