In today’s society, billions of people across the world access the internet several times each day. In recent years, social media sites have become increasingly popular. Many people have the internet on their smart phones, and at the touch of a button can check their email, facebook, twitter, myspace and tumblr. Young children and teenagers access these sites and others before, during and after school. There is no doubt that there are certain social benefits to these sites; socialising is a key component in positive mental health. However, the benefits do not outweigh the problems they cause. Social networking has terrible consequences, including bullying, harassment and in very unfortunate cases, suicide. For this reason, social networking is horrible for our society and should not be used.

Social networking is bad for society as bullying and harassment has increased due to the use of social media. According to the Cyber Bully Research Centre, about half of young people in the United States have experienced some form of cyber bulling; 10-20% of those people experience it regularly. Some other frightening statistics show that cyber bullying is on the rise and becoming an increasing problem in today’s society due to the fact that so many teens use social networks to communicate. Suicide is much more common among adolescents that are confronted by bullies online. It is not something we can just stand by and watch pass by; we have to do something to stop it. We are living in a society today where it is common for a high school student to take their lives because of cyber bullying. It has to stop.

In recent years there has been an increasing number of adolescent, cyber bullying cases that have ended in suicide. According to an article from the South Carolina State University, Alexis Pilkington, 17, committed suicide in March 2010 because of a number of cyber bullying attacks that she received from social media websites, especially Facebook. On October 7th, 2003, Patrick Halligan, 13, hung himself because of harassment he received at the hands of his peers. They spread vicious rumours, told him to kill himself and drew him into an online conversation that was later copied and pasted and spread to his entire school. How would you feel if you were the parents of these children? Having a police officer at your doorstep telling you your beloved child is dead. It is unjust to for a life to be taken over pointless comments. Cyber bullying has become so prevalent in the world for several reasons, one of the reasons is that the bully usually remains anonymous and it becomes easier to bully without having to worry about the risk of being caught.

There are many websites that should be shut down due to the increase of bullying because of the availability of the ‘anonymous option’, for example Tumblr and Qooh.me. Bullies believe anonymity prevents the likelihood of repercussion. If they go on anonymous, the chance of getting caught by teachers, parents and the police is decreased. Anonymous or not the impact on the victim is the same.

The worst possible consequence of cyber bullying is death. The failure by children to report incidences of online bullying has led to many children committing suicide due to depression. Reports in the USA today, show that