From the argument "Hooked on Facebook" write answers to the following question:
What is the argument?
What evidence is being used to support the argument?
Is the opposing view addressed in the argument? And refuted?
What, if any, appeals (emotioal, logical, or ethical) are used in the argument?
"Hooked on Facebook"
Imagine a drug that made American teenagers think and talk even more about the timeless concerns of adolescence: who's cool, who's cute, and who's going out with whom. Then imagine that millions of teens were taking this drug every day.
Actually, you don't have to. The drug already exists, and it's called MySpace. There's a competitor drug, too, known as Facebook.
Between one-half and three-quarters of American teens already have a profile on an Internet social network, where they spend hours per week - nobody really knows how many - sharing pictures, gossip, and jokes. And we should all be worried about that, although not for the reasons you might suspect.
Newspapers keep reminding us about "online predators" and other malfeasance on the Net, which makes us miss the digital forest for the trees. In this medium, the chief danger doesn't come from depraved adults. It's much subtler than that, and it comes from teenagers themselves - specifically, from their insatiable desire to hang out with each other.
And the key word here is insatiable. After all, teens have always wanted to hang out with each other. But the Internet lets them do it 24/7, transforming the social world of adolescence into an omnipresence.
Consider last year's MacArthur Foundation report on "digital youth," which confirmed that most teens communicate online with kids they already know, and that they're doing so more than ever. "Young people use new media to build friendships and romantic relationships, as well as to hang out with each other as much and as often as possible," the report found.
As the teenagers would say, "Duh!" Then they would ask, "What's the problem with that?"
Nothing, really, except for what it replaces: solitude. Once you're "always on," as the kids describe it, you're never alone.
That means you're less likely to read a book for pleasure, to draw a picture, or simply to stare out the window and imagine worlds other than your own. And as any parent with a teenager could testify, you're also less likely to communicate with the real people in your immediate surroundings. Who wants to talk to family members when your friends are just a click away?
True, many teens do communicate with strangers on the Net. But adolescents are also very adept at sniffing out "creepy" adults, a threat that has been vastly overblown by media reports.
Consider all of the ink spilled over Lori Drew, the Missouri woman who used a phony MySpace account to trick a teenager into believing that Drew was a male suitor. When the fake suitor dumped the teen and she committed suicide, you would have thought every kid in America was somehow in danger.
They're not - at least not from strangers. Although 32 percent of American teens say they have been contacted online by someone they don't know, just 7 percent report feeling "scared or uncomfortable" as a result, according to the Pew Research Center.
And when teens do feel hurt by something on the Internet, it usually comes from - surprise! - other adolescents at their schools. About one-third of teenagers say they have been the target of "online bullying," such as threatening messages or embarrassing pictures. But two-thirds of teens say bullying is more likely to happen offline. The Internet just makes it easier to do - and harder to escape.
If social networking sites had existed when I was a kid, I would have used them every bit as much as my teenage daughter does. With my own Facebook or MySpace page, I would have focused even more on all of the natural worries that permeated my adolescence: Am I cool? Am I cute? Will my peers like me? And it would have taken me a lot longer to become an adult.
So what should today's adults do in the face of this new challenge? We can try to limit our teenagers' computer time, of course, but that's probably a lost cause by now.
The better solution, as always, comes from the kids themselves. Teens around the country have started a small online movement against social networking sites, trying to make them seem uncool. My best friends' daughter just took down her Facebook page, for example, insisting that the site is "for losers."