@ObergJustin
I definitely feel that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can change and influence the people that use them. I agree with Coleman’s statement, “Media use changes the user. With each shift in automation, simulation, and transmission, we discover not only new technologies but also new facets of ourselves.” I look at my Facebook page and I see photos of myself and of my friends, updates about what are going on in my friends’ lives, relationships forming, relationships falling apart and of course advertisements for a variety of different products that somehow are applicable to me. Because I was able to communicate with my friends more easily and more frequently through social networking sites, I definitely feel that I became a more social person in my teenage years. It was through Facebook my friends and I arranged parties and had conversations about our lives and got to know each other better. However, there is another side to social networks that can change users for the worse. Coleman also talks about how these new realities allow someone “to be cooler than in life”. Many people abuse these sites from innocently training themselves so that they can only communicate with people from behind a computer screen to overtly deceiving people about who they are and what their motives are. As long as people use these sites in moderation and in conjunction with their lives and not as a replacement for socializing in the real world, I think Facebook and Twitter will have a positive effect on the user using them.