Are Social Networking Sites Helping or Hurting Us?

I think in a lot of ways Social Networking sites are causing us to be less social.  People are becoming more comfortable talking and chatting to people online than talking to them face to face.  There are some people that I’ll chat to online but rarely talk to in person, and it actually really sucks because it’s not even a real friendship if people are too uncomfortable to talk to you person.   If Social Networking sites didn’t exist, we would all be forced to communicate face to face.  We wouldn’t have the option of ‘friending’ someone online or liking their status.  I can’t say I’m completely anti-social networking because even I use Facebook to communicate with people and read statuses.  I think it can actually be a helpful tool to communicate with people that live far away from you or to schedule plans to hang out with people that do live near you.  We can also easily see photos and hear about things that are happening in other’s lives quickly.    But I think a lot of the time, Facebook is overused, a waste of time, and causes people to avoid talking to people face to face, which is not a good thing.