The characteristics of life in the 21st century, with its consumerism, high-tech grandeur and exhaustingly fast pace, existed in the past only as “science fiction,” and for Borel they were figments of his wildest imaginations.

Borel, after all, lived in a Europe torn apart by World War II. He and many of his peers still remained strikingly naïve and uninformed compared to teenagers of today because communication was laggard and sparse.

“There was hardly radio, music, no nothing,” Borel said. “Only mail, and that traveled by boat. We had very little communication and we were very ignorant of what was happening around us— the world at that time was still a big place.”

The revolution of communication, most notably social networking, has created lifestyles, possibilities and ideals that teenagers during Borel’s era would have thought unbelievable.

Our generation is the first to truly grow up with social networking, which has effortlessly entwined itself into our lives by both displacing and supplementing traditional modes of communication such as mail, telephone and face-to-face interaction.

“[Students] use social networking to add more dimension to their interactions as opposed to taking away the face-to-face interactions,” Egan Junior high School counselor Bruce McClain said. “Whenever the opportunity presents itself [teenagers are still] able to connect face-to-face.”

And as the generation of the 21st century, we grew up taking for granted the ease with which we can talk to whomever we want, whenever we want. Old barriers such as geographical constraints are now obsolete. As junior Alejandra Reules puts it, she’s “always updating how [she’s] feeling, what [she’s] doing.”

And while many protest the growth of social networking as shallow or superficial, they cannot deny that spending a seemingly absurd amount of time staring at a computer screen is now simply a fact of life. It’s simply too easy to lose ourselves in the interminable waves while surfing the world wide web.

“I definitely lose track of time while I’m online,” senior Olivia Hunter said. “It’s easy to get distracted, and I spend about four to five hours online daily. A lot of the time I stay on my computer until about one or two in the morning.”

Olivia’s situation reflects that of most other teenagers, who spend an average of 1.4 hours on Facebook a night, according to a poll conducted by The Talon.

Why do we dedicate so much of our time chatting and looking things up on the net?

Because it’s so efficient, so accessible, so fast—a reflection of our generation’s love of instant gratification and the value we place on our time. In many ways, we’re evolutionarily hard-wired to love social networking.

“We are innately, biologically social beings,” McClain said. “Human beings find other human beings just innately fascinating.”

The phenomenon of social networking, which from the outside seems so peculiar (people don’t call just to say that it is raining or they hate American cars, so why do they share online?), isn’t just another form of communication.

It’s something never before seen; it’s a chance intersection between limitless technology and the human spirit. We don’t just use networking to make new contacts and stay in contact. We network to chat, to plan to meet, to discover, to express ourselves, to create virtual selves, to flirt and date, to break up, and in general, to constantly keep ourselves feeling busy and entertained with as little effort as possible.

As we post and blog and tweet and comment (and as a whole put our friendships on steroids), history has yet to evaluate social networking as good or bad. But for once, with so many of us writing at our computers, the story is in our hands.

A catharsis for the inner (or outer) artist, DeviantArt is the largest online community showcasing user-made artwork. Ranging from Flash games, novellas or doodles on the margin of binder paper, it’s where the unknown artist can make a name for himself before dying a premature, poetic death.

At Fanfiction amateur writers base stories off thewishful thinking of what should have happened. For example, unsatisfied “Twilight” fans can reinvent their own alternative endings where Bella dumps Edward’s cold, sparkling butt for Jacob.

Blogs, short for web logs, are journal entries of users that break down the limits of geography so that a middle-school girl from Sweden can read about an American college student’s crappy morning commute.

Through reading the intimate details on the life of someone they have never met, users befriend strangers.

Tumblr, for example, is a blogging medium through which users post easy-to-digest forms of entertainment with its “reblog” feature. The only downside to Tumblr is its Facebook-like addictiveness.

ChatRoulette may not be able to help you get girls, but it does offer alternatives by using the blind date strategy to randomly assign video chatters on its site.

“All guys are there to see boobs,” junior Terrence Cape said.

Users take advantage of anonymity to behave liberally. Junior Martin Merencillo participated in a dance battle with his chat partner, when “[he] just started dancing and the person started dancing back.”

“I’m like ‘damn’ and we just danced on the Internet,” Martin said.

For the extrovert who yearns for an almost face-to-face chat with other bored individuals, ChatRoulette is there. Just ignore the occasional dick who flaunts his body parts, of course.

As always, I checked my new notifications first and found I was tagged in a few photos from the weekend. So of course, I looked at every picture from the new album.

I’m a somewhat photogenic person, but you win some and you lose some, and when you lose, you untag yourself immediately. Also, with an eye out for good photos, I was on the prowl for a new profile picture.

After a certain period of time (for me it’s usually about once a month, depending on how much I like the picture), a person’s profile picture needs to change. You know, just to spice things up a bit.

Anyway, while I was browsing photos, I spied a friend who I hadn’t talked to in a while, so I went to her profile to catch up. She had just uploaded almost 300 photos from spring break, so I had no choice but to skim through them. I admired how good she looked in some of them. And I haven’t shopped in a while, so I looked with a hint of envy at her stylish clothes.

By the last photo, I officially felt like a lurker. But everyone else who had a Facebook does the same thing as me, so I wasn’t concerned. And she had posted the photos onto the web, so she wanted me to see them, right?

Back on her profile, I saw from the corner of my eye a photo of a mutual friend. He had changed his profile picture (what, you don’t memorize your friends’ photos?), so my interest was piqued. Clicking on his profile, I looked at the new photo, and then continued to go through each of his 57 profile pictures. It wasn’t like I had a crush on him or anything. It was just a friendly kind of stalking, and I couldn’t stop my finger from clicking “next.”

I checked the time again, and it was 12:52 a.m. I had wasted over an hour creeping. I realized that I really needed to start doing my work, but then my friend started chatting with me over Facebook chat, and I couldn’t be rude and sign off on her. That’s just not proper manners. So I gossiped with her for a while about some recent boy drama, which is always interesting.

Forty minutes later, she finally said she had to shower and signed off.

It was 1:29 a.m. Great. I still had that senior project paper to write, and calculus was waiting.

Tuesday was a pretty terrible day.

Facebook is NOT Twitter

Or your diary for that matter. Please stop posting nine status updates a day. We all just need to face the fact that no one cares if you’re taking a shower, no one cares if you love your boyfriend and we definitely don’t care that you’re “now in the kitchen” either. It’s cool that you moved locations and everything, but for once let’s try not to share as much.

If you still feel the overwhelming impulse to constantly update a world that is mostly indifferent or annoyed by your existence, try creating a Twitter account. Just remember to post status updates on Facebook in moderation, and everyone will appreciate it.

It’s cool that you have a Mac and everything…

But can we cut it out with the Photobooth albums? It gets a little excessive, especially when you post seven of these albums in a row, each with over a hundred pictures. You’re not hip and artsy, you just come off as really bored or really conceited. Simply enough, some Photobooth photos are totally fine, but don’t get too crazy. You don’t want to be known as the person who uploads ten albums of you hugging your dog.

Quizzes/Ninjas/Lover of the Day

This one is easy. Don’t do it. Ever. Do not even think about installing these annoying applications or taking these quizzes about your daily fortune cookie message or horoscope that simply clog up everyone’s News Feeds with pointless, inane information. And there’s always considerable griping when people get constant notifications asking them if they want to play “Ninjas” or “Zombies.” You shouldn’t be playing these games in the first place, and if you are, you should be either embarrassed or under the age of 10.

The “lol” and “haha”

People should really strive to not overkill the function of these two words. It is not necessary to put “lol” or “haha” after every single sentence you type. Unless something is legitimately humorous, be warned that you sound like an idiot. Nothing’s funny, so why are you laughing?

Sometimes a “haha” can be thrown in at a non-funny moment to ease tension if you’re saying something mildly harsh to someone. That’s completely understandable. But if you’re saying things like “Hey what’s up lol” you need to start omitting these words from your online speech.

Lies sicken and fascinate. People are repulsed when they hear about celebrity scandals and unfaithful senators on television. But change the channel and those same people will gleefully follow the smoke-and-mirrors of fictional characters with a religious devotion. “House” has never had better ratings. George Clooney’s Danny Ocean is up to a baker ’s dozen. And nothing has made math look sexier than an MIT student cheating in a Vegas casino.

What is it about lying that makes us condemn it so readily yet commit it so willingly? Every culture discourages deceit, but every day, when turning in copied assignments or commenting on the curvaceous qualities of a dress, students and adults alike lie without batting an eye.

Because in the end, white lying isn’t wrong; being a responsible liar is as much a part of growing up as is body odor. But with the power afforded to us by innocent lies and half-truths, we need to
know where to draw the line, and more often than not we misjudge the true ramifications of our actions.

The main reason we lie is simple: personal gain. We lie because it allows us to do less and get more. Most day-to-day lying isn’t part of an organized conspiracy; these are the hastily stitched excuses used to wiggle out of a homework assignment or the puffed-up stories used to impress the ladies.

“We don’t really think about [how we justify a lie] because it’s right on the spot,” sophomore Samir Kishore said. “For me, I have to make the lie really quick, and I don’t have time to think about whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong.”

And most of the time, these lies have hardly any consequences; after all, pretending that you were at the library (when instead you were at your boyfriend’s house) isn’t a crime on par with murder or robbery.

“It’s okay to lie when it doesn’t hurt anyone close to you, whether it be your friends or your family,” junior Tasha Mistry said.

Nevertheless, these are the lies children learn not to tell, and in many ways the childhood fables are right. Lying for personal gain is wrong.

But most students and adults continue to lie anyway; when it comes to making the gritty, daily decisions, practicality trumps morality. Call it a maturity to understand consequence, or call it general adolescent cynicism, but many teenagers justify their lies with “the greater good.”

“I think it’s a protection thing,” junior Jordan Campitelli said. “You don’t want to get in trouble or let them down, so you just lie to them so you won’t disappoint them.”

As the saying goes, “Only fools and children tell the truth.” Small children need to live in a morally black and white world because they lack the maturity to know when to lie. By the time high school rolls around, however, that black and white has been smudged to moral grays by pressures from all around.

“Most of the times, lies are basically unacceptable, but sometimes things come up,” senior Hayley Stevens said. “I know I’ve definitely lied to my parents because it just comes up. … People lie everyday for little reasons. I’ve never met anyone who’s completely open 24/7.”

But just because we can lie, it doesn’t mean we should; we too quickly jump to the easiest option, and our hasty lies more
often than not come back to bite us in the future.

When sophomore Marissa Mirbach’s dad caught her red- handed in a lie about whose car she has been in, she learned this lesson firsthand.

“I got in trouble for that, which may not have been that bad if I didn’t lie,” Marissa said. “You can always get caught in a lie, so it’s less complicated to just tell the truth.”

So while it’s true that the ends can justify the means, the problem is we never know how something will end. We forget the giant needle of uncertainty always dangling, ready to pop our bubble of lies.

Lying is wrong, then, not only because it violates trust. It’s wrong because it’s arrogant; it’s arrogant to presume that we know everything that’s going on and that we can predict with certainty how our lies will affect other people.

Thus the “appropriate” lie— if there is such a thing—is in the intersection of childhood innocence and adolescent cynicism. A good liar should be smart enough to recognize the “greater good,” and a good liar should be humble enough to defer to morality and the truth when he or she doesn’t know enough.

During the school year, students and teachers are forced into the same routine and environment five times a week for nine months, making lying inevitable. Students lie to teachers left and right (and be assured that they are aware) to avoid suffering the consequences of speaking the truth. Such lies range from tardies and absences, unfinished homework and excuses to avoid tests or quizzes.

English teacher Michael Smith said that he thinks students lie “daily” about “how they’re feeling, how their home life is going, how they’re doing, how they want to do and where they see themselves.”

“I used to lie quite often actually, probably like once a day or so,” junior Adriana Lopez said. “I made it my New Year ’s resolution to cut down on my lying.”

However, some students don’t want to risk the consequences of being caught in a lie.

“I don’t lie to teachers often,” another anonymous junior said. “I actually get really paranoid if I try to lie.”

“I would say typically most [students that I’ve had in my class] are pretty straightforward,” English teacher Ryan Ikeda said. “I tell them that I’d rather [they] tell the truth than make up stories. … My philosophy is ‘I’m going to be honest with you if you’ll be honest with me.’”

Teachers tell lies in the classroom as well, though it is not as common. It may not be completely accurate to label them as ‘liars,’ because teachers are often not as manipulative or dishonest as their students. Teachers tend to avoid questions or uncomfortable topics rather than lie about something academically related.

“Teachers may feel uncomfortable revealing too much about their personal life,”Adriana said. “They lie just to make the classroom a better environment where the students won’t lose respect for them.”

Both Smith and Ikeda, however, said that they do not lie to students.

“If I’m not comfortable answering a question, I just don’t have a comment,” Smith
said. “There are some things that teachers and students legally cannot discuss and certainly shouldn’t discuss morally or ethically.”

For the most part, dishonesty between students and teachers is made up of white lies or excuses, and they are rarely meant to personally deceive or bring down the other. But when it comes to dishonesty between student and peer, lies become more personal.

“In front of my friends, I’ll lie a lot to provoke a reaction or just see how long I can get them going before they figure it out,” senior Sean Wells said.

However, at the end of the day, the best way to handle a situation is to always tell the truth. A true relationship is measured by how open two people can be with each other.

Women often complain that men don’t communicate well and don’t listen to what they say. This stereotype, however, stems from the way men express themselves verbally. When men talk, they try to convey only what needs to be said without any extra fluff and then get on with life. Men don’t try to look deeper or analyze what is being said. Instead, they take it at face value.

When a woman says “I had such a bad day today,” men hear it as a fact being stated rather than an opening for a conversation. Realizing that he has nothing to say that can be perceived as useful, he grunts and continues to watch football.

In this instance, if a girl had said, “I had a really bad day and I want to talk about it,” her need would have been more transparent. The man, as a result, would be more open to talking.

Similarly, the stereotype that men are insensitive jerks with no feelings is overstated. Men do not feel comfortable gushing about how they feel, especially since this is considered an “unmanly” action by society. Men want more desperately than anything else to be successful and to fit in; therefore they are more willing to conform to this unspoken social norm and bottle up their feelings. It isn’t that men are emotionless rocks; it is more that they are afraid of being ostracized for saying how they feel.

On the issue of being hormonal and impulsive, it is true that men have very high levels of testosterone, a hormone responsible for our love of football, violence and boobs. While we can’t really control the feelings we have, the way men express them is very heavily influenced by the fear men have of being perceived as unmanly. For example, it is considered much manlier to watch the Super Bowl than the U.S. Open, due to the violent and hyper-masculine nature of the Super Bowl.

In truth, the way men interact is ordained in a series of rules that are not written down, but instinctively known to their gender class. These rules are often known as Man Law. For example, men know that in a restroom, they maintain at least one urinal of spacing between each other. They also do not talk to or look at each other. They merely finish their business, wash their hands and then walk out.

Similarly, men know that it is not appropriate to hit on the best friend’s girlfriend if she dumps him, or to ask for directions and instructions. Asking for directionsor following a manual is seen as a sign of weakness among men, who generally prescribe to the “trial and error”method of thought.If questioned, men generally respond with “[insert manly man here—Chuck Norris,James Bond etc.] wouldn’t need a manual to assemble this [insert power tool here—leaf blower, microwave etc].”

While the two sexes have been dealt very different hands in life, men clearly have the better of two fates. Shaving facial hair and having to pay for dates suck, b u t they trump having to give birth and dealing with the issues that accompany the necessary baby delivering equipment.

And though men continue to annoy and confuse women, it should be duly noted that men are relatively simple creatures who can be understood quite easily.

Dear girls: 10 things we hate about you

1. You act like drama queens
2. You flake out on your plans when we are supposed to hang out
3. You change your mind a lot
4. How long it takes you to get ready
5. You always have to go to the bathroom with your friends
6. You’re emotional
7. You always talk about food, eating and getting fat
8. You talk too much, especially about yourselves
9. You scream and giggle about everything
10. You are too materialistic

…and 5 things we like about you

1. You smell good
2. You put effort into how you dress
3. You can dance
4. You’re good at cooking
5. You’re sensitive

Media portrayals determine the stereotypes and standards for girls and guys alike. Sophomore Gabi Hamlett believes that the media plays an important role in the lives of both genders. “The media generally portrays girls as being very into boys and clothes, and boys as being really into sports,” Gabi said.

Movies, for instance, portray girls as rich brats who use their daddy’s credit cards to purchase designer clothes. The music industry depicts flawless girls wearing nothing but one-fourth of a bikini, making it seem as if they exist only for the purposes of pleasuring guys. Older generations maintain the notion that women are domestic beings who are supposed to stay at home, cook, clean, care for the kids all while looking hot in a floral dress and high heels. Society portrays women as the weaker gender in sports, math and science. These generalizations pressure girls into fulfilling unfair standards.

Of course, there are the benign stereotypes that girls find assigned to them. Any girl, female, woman, chick, lady, mademoiselle—whatever you want to call her—is usually expected to have the following attributes. She takes forever in the bathroom, looking in the mirror for no less than five minutes in doing so. She obsesses over the color pink, and freaks out at the sight of spiders. She shortens words to create clever abbreviations that end up taking the same or more amount of energy to say (i.e. Positive becomes pos, or Definitely becomes def ), and is ecstatic whenever within a five mile radius of the mall. In reality, most girls do not relate to more than one of these characteristics, if any. Behind her mask, each girl has an individual personality.

“What makes guys attracted to girls is when girls are themselves,” Gabi said. “That sounds corny but it’s when girls are down to earth.”

Girls are too often categorized based on their appearance, clothing and first impressions. In addition to media stereotypes, society in general perceives girls as distinctive from boys.

“Girls listen to people more, and they know how to respond to things while guys just say the same thing every single time,” sophomore Omri Fried said. “Girls are much neater than most guys and put more time into their work.”

Much, much more work. Girls, imagine this: rolling out of bed at 7:45 a.m., throwing on a semi-clean T-shirt, smelling to check if you need an extra coat on top of yesterday’s deodorant, and then running out the door. Sounds impossible, but this is the everyday routine for guys. We girls wake up at an unholy hour in the morning to calculate the perfect combination of tans and browns to apply on our faces. Guys get to pee wherever they want. Girls have to shave—everything.

And yet, despite the huge advantages to being a guy and disadvantages to being a girl, girls should never doubt their lucky extra X-chromosome. Girls, imagine not being able to wear make-up, not being able to go dress shopping for prom. Imagine not flirting, gossiping, shopping, texting and engaging in the non-stop girl talk boys would die to decode.

Without this lucky extra X, girls’ definition of fun would involve not showering and killing people in video games. Fortunately “girl fun” is less barbaric and a lot more fun. And girls, after all, just want to have fun.

Dear guys: 10 things we hate about you

1. You never call back
2. You only text back three words when we are having a serious conversation
3. You act differently when you are with your friends as opposed to when we are alone
4. You are awkward around our friends
5. You try to act smarter than you actually are
6. You are shallow
7. “Guys don’t want friends with benefits, they want benefits without friends”
8. You wear the same clothing several days in a row
9. You don’t shave your beards/mustaches
10. You are always playing video games

…and 5 things we like about you

1. You open the door for us
2. You don’t hold grudges
3. You pay for us on dates
4. You make us laugh
5. You talk to the people you have a problem with instead of going behind their backs