Twitter, the newest web attraction. Twitter is a site that uses some of the common attractions of Myspace and Facebook in a whole new way. According to Twitter's website, "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" 

Simply put, it is like the status bar on Facebook. You simply state what you are doing or the thoughts running through your head. Twitter is easy to join, its free, and it can be updated via cell phone. Which is a feature that makes it quicker and easily accessible. 

Bob Caswell  writes a review on TechConsumer,focusing on the design and goals of Twitter. He says "The whole point of Twitter is to answer the question 'What are you doing' in 140 characters or less. Your friends instantaneously see a trail of your answers, and you see a feed of their latest answers as well." 

He continues to say that its all about following people around, whether they are your friends or interesting people that you met. You can follow their updates and thats basically how you get connected. According to him it can potentially become an addiction however it can be useful sometimes. 

However the more media attractions the more addictions. "Mass media and society", an article written by Alison Alexander, and Jarice Hanson believe that media is harming our society. 

Hanson says, " Media is a very integral part of our lives and therefore it generates popular interest and debate about any social problem that we can think of." 

For example mass media affects how we learn about our world and interact with one another. They gave some staggering stats about media consumption. If we face it, there is a lot of junk out there on the web. So is it really worth the time. Should we really be investing our time in various blogs and chats such as Myspace, or Xanga, or Facebook, or Twitter, and others.  

For communications sake yes it is probably getting more and more imperative that we keep up with technology in order to be connected. But how involved do we need to be. I want to propose that we can still be kept in the loop and not have to be virtually addicted to any websites. 

This article by "Mass Media Has Both Harmful and Beneficial Effects" written by Herminne Tonita does a good job describing the negative and positive outcomes of media.  

"Media is beneficial because it provides us all the information we need from all over the world, it entertains us and at the same time it helps us find more about a topic we are interested in. On the other hand, TV and the Internet destroy communication between the members of the family and make them behave like teenagers."