Firstly, the increase in social networking means that there are topics such as gun crime, drug crime and gang culture being explicitly glamorised by the youth as a social status. This leads to negative stereotypes being produced which labels all youths to be criminals. In addition, this leads to moral panic within society as the younger generations are portrayed to be violent tearaways. This supports that the internet means youths invest more time on their internet enabled devices rather than taking part in academic studies. With unemployment at an all time high and university places unavailable only the well educated youths will be able to attend further education and this is likely to leave a large minority of those who remain uneducated, illiterate and rely on government subsidies and benefits, which in turn is likely to increase the UK’s large deficit. Therefore, these concerns are all regarding the internet and how the youth are consuming it.

Also, the increase in social networking encourages more criminals to converse and in turn this means that cyber bullying and crime is likely to increase. This is a huge problem at the moment where profiles of young teenagers, both black and white include pictures of themselves and friends with weapons and dangerous dogs. Additionally, those who use social networking in a negative manner encourage that democratic rights should be abused, for example, ‘the right to freedom of speech’. The UK is a democratic political system and therefore heavily relies on the citizens just as much as the members of parliament. Decisions made via referendums and the use of pressure groups influence the UK government and so in turn have a direct link to the quality of life and liberal civil liberties. If people are abusing these then legally they should have no right to use the internet and join social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Bebo.

Similarly, the web 2.0 and its social networking sites mean that there is likely to be more interrogations of privacy via hacking of law abiding citizens. With the internet providing the world with banking systems and confidential documents those that have the ability to hack passwords can do so and ruin the sense of privacy that users feel once they are behind a screen in the comfort of their own utopia.

Social networking sites allow people to keep in touch and share ideas and beliefs therefore this free communication benefits all involved. It has easy access, its free, available world wide and is only literally a button away. The internet as a whole, despite fulfilling many features still has not reached its pinnacle as it does not provide net neutrality and therefore should, in the near future, ensure this takes place. The fact that companies such as Sky (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and BT still are stating that they provide a service of a certain speed and then offer something a fraction of that, at full price, is truly diabolical and therefore should transform its ways to become more democratic to enable citizens to keep in touch and share ideas and beliefs.

In addition, Privacy settings can be edited on social networking websites and if you are a child under the age of 13, you cannot legally have accounts to networks such as Facebook. This is a good feature of certain websites as it ensures that crime such as paedophilia is kept to a minimal and more important innocent victims are unharmed. However, those with complacent parent or guardians are to blame if their child is subject to discrimination of any sort as it is their responsibility. In conclusion, editable websites with strict privacy settings are democratic and therefore serve a plausible function to the responsible world.