Are social Internet sites like Myspace creating more cliques in schools?
Every school has its segregated cliques of students today—too many, in my opinion. Cliques can lead to isolation, feuds, discrimination, and prejudice. Students learn to judge others based on what group they belong to, rather than who they are as individuals.
People often identify themselves as part of certain cliques on social Internet sites. And sometimes, the e-dialogues that go on between students over instant messaging can be surprisingly offensive. Myspace-users may identify specific other cliques—or even certain people in other cliques—and gossip about them or insult them. Also, people often just have other members of their clique in their "Top 10 Friends."
I can’t help but think sometimes that Internet sites like Myspace are contributing to the problem of clique segregation in schools. These Web sites offer students a networking system where discrimination is not patrolled, and students are free to identify themselves and choose their friends freely. I fear that many students may not just be using these sites to build friendships and chat; they may be using them to insult other students, gossip, discriminate, and deepen the rifts between cliques that are already so uncomfortably palpable in our schools today.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
