Article on How Teenagers Spend Their Free Time

What do teenagers do in their spare time? They are on Facebook! This is Bristol FollowWednesday, November 10, 2010 WHAT do we teenagers do in our spare time? Hang round by shops with our hoods up, knifes in pocket, shouting abuse and getting drunk? Yes, all those grown ups would like to think that but, we normally just go out to have fun – go to the cinema, shopping and places like that! Or we are on Facebook. We will spend our lives, sharing our lives, on Facebook. From posting pictures, writing statuses, and joining funny yet sometimes offensive groups or fan pages.

But, have you ever thought, that maybe, you could get into heaps of trouble from those little comments? Facebook can get quite abusive. With us posting pictures, which, yes, aren’t very modest of ourselves, with skimpy outfits, and slapped-on make-up. But the nasty comments, are where we draw the line. Consider this, once it’s on there, will your digital footprint ever be erased? Imogen Rodgers, Lucy Perry, Bethany Seymour, Year 9, St Bede’s CAN Facebook fight to stay on our favourites or is it time to ignore the friend you don’t like?

It’s most people’s way of life – an addiction. With no less than 400 million active users Facebook is ranked the number one social networking site worldwide but with so many others, like Twitter, Bebo, MySpace, Flickr, Google buzz, Habbo, Friendster, the list is endless, Will Facebook keep its crown or will one of its enemies take over? At the moment 35 million Facebook users update their status each day, this shows how popular it is. The site’s publicity and popularity levels are soaring, but over the past four years another site has had quite a bit of the spotlight too.

Twitter was launched in 2006 and with its appeal of getting to hear what celebrities have to say directly from them and reading their every “tweet” it seemed like there was a new social fish in town. However, even though it may seem like Facebook is starting to slip away, no other site could take over from what stole our hearts first. Elsie Bradley, The City Academy, Bristol DO you have Facebook? Some people feel that entertainment is sitting in front of a computer and watching the lives of others dissolve into this new cyber life.

How many times have you seen a message saying “I’m bored! “? They make me want to scream, “THEN GO AND DO SOMETHING ELSE! ” But the truth is that our lives are now revolving around these social networking sites. Those who don’t have such groups as Facebook are constantly under peer pressure to create an account and get sucked in. Especially if you don’t have an account, you have no control whatsoever of what pictures of you are being pinned up on the internet.

All those pictures that you thought your “friends” deleted – they’re all up on Facebook. Sarah Orr, Amy McGrath, and Evie Gowie, Year 9, St Bede’s I, LIKE many other people really enjoy going home and using the computer maybe to play games, send an email or go on Facebook but are we getting too addicted to Facebook? Do you really need to go on Facebook, when you have just spent a day at school talking to those people? Emily Shiga, Banor Kofi-Ofuafor and Jess Chapman, Year 9, St Bede’s