Facebook makes us what?!

I was surprised to see Clive Thompson's view that facebook is making us "kinder". Honestly, it's not. Maybe, perhaps, when we are all newly - graduated, job - seeking young adults, we will start to become the nicer, friendly, people Thompson described in the article. Right now, most people my age feel their only goal in life is to party every weekend while consuming as many alcoholic beverages as possible. Believe me, they broadcast to the whole world when they are gonna party. Do you know any team coaches young enough, or whom know the internet well enough to keep tabs on their team? I don't, but Thompson seemed to believe that many coaches stay up to watch pictures of their kids at two in the morning when the pictures first come in. The thoughts in the article are good in theory, but if people really are becoming nicer (the way we assume teens want to be seen), how do you explain cyber - bulling. People do that on Facebook. They even cyber bully on youtube. I remember seeing an ad for an episode of 20/20 featuring two girls who fought with another girl. The friends then posted the video of their violent attack of this girl on youtube. The girl was traumatized and claimed that the girls had not had a good reason to attack her, while the friends' and their mothers' story was that the girl had attacked them  for no reason. They even went as far as to say they were wrong to have posted the video on youtube, though that comment may have had more to do with the principle finding the video through the site. In fact, many young teens have found a new way to bully others through the internet. I'm not saying that the internet makes people violent, mean, or more likely to do illicit things. However, the argument that social networking makes us nicer is a little absurd. Personally, I don't know why I ever accepted my sister's friend request, because she frequently posts comments she wouldn't say to me in public on my page where a lot of our cousin and mutual friends can see it.