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Social Networking sites have become part of the public consciousness, we are instantly checking them and updating to keep our friends and family informed on how we are, what we are doing and even what we are eating. But keeping safe on social networking sites is just as important as having fun, and here are some tips to remember when using them.

• Hide your personal information. Sites such as Facebook have an ‘About Me’ section that allows you to share your DOB, email address, phone number. If you want to share this information with your friends that is fine but make sure you are only sharing it with your friends. Check your security settings and change them from public (anyone can see them) to friends only, or change it so that only specific people can see this information. This means that you won’t be getting dodgy texts and emails for strangers.
• Don’t add people you don’t know. If someone wants to add you on a site and you don’t know them just press delete. They could be completely normal people but it is better to be safe then sorry.
• Think before you post. This is to make sure that you don’t write or post something embarrassing about yourself, or about someone else. It is not just friends who check your Facebook, but also families and current/potential employers. You don’t want to ruin your job prospects or your friends because you didn’t think about something you were posting.
• Make a strong password. If you want to make sure your social networking accounts are being kept safe and secure, create good passwords for them. Use a variation of letters, numbers and symbols to make your password unique and harder to guess.
• Invest and Update Security Software. Social Networking sites can be rife with risky links, and clicking on one could unleash a nasty virus onto your computer. Be safe about links and make sure that you have up to date security software to ensure you computer stays safe.

Stay cautious when on social networking sites, as long as you are safe you can continue to have fun.

Social networking has changed the way we not only interact with each other on the internet, but also how we communicate and organise ourselves in our daily lives. You may have been invited to a specific event on Facebook, as an example, and this would be a great way of demonstrating this. You may not have heard about the event from word of mouth or letter or something similar, but chances are you will have heard about it on a social networking site, especially if it is not in your direct area or is in the semi-distant future. This has effectively both opened up and closed off certain areas of communication, as the globalisation of the event would be higher, but the lack of word of mouth means that closer relationships may suffer.

As a tool, social networking can work well in business and other fields, increasing the amount of useful people that are available to you, and broadening your scope of considering who is useful to you. As such, it can be all too easy to add people on social networking sites that turn out to be useless, or bearing little relation to what you actually want out of the relationship. In this way, social networking tends to make people simultaneously more open to new things and more biased about the things they already like, similar to having lots of acquaintances without having many real friends. The amount of time needed to be spent on these sites can also be detrimental to social and emotional wellbeing.

International news has enjoyed a diverse and colourful past, and with its influence having a greater impact on our lives each day it seems unlikely that it will be going anywhere any time soon. As other countries become developed and begin reporting on international news for themselves, the biases that have been associated with them thanks to the press we have in this country have been shaken, sometimes to the core, and we force ourselves to re-evaluate what such countries are capable of.

The power of the news is even more potent at an international level, when national stereotypes can often get in the way of accurate journalism, and situations can be driven out of control by the media. International news can even have an effect on politics, especially if the subject matter is about an important issue or a politician themselves. Leaders have been made and been broken because of the way international news has been used, whether it is in their favour or against. If you sit down to consider this for a moment, it can be quite terrifying to contemplate an entity such as international news having so much power over the world, as news stations and organisations are often ungoverned, and in some cases do not even need to provide proper sources.

International news has helped to open up the world to other cultures, countries and ways of life, but at the same time the biased way stories are reported and depicted can be misleading and, ultimately, dangerous.

The internet has affected the way the news is reported significantly and many people will find that a breaking or developing story will often be reported on online news websites before it reaches TV news rooms.  Because of various advances in modern telecommunication technologies brought about by the rise of the internet online news reports are often the most up to date and accurate. Also, these technologies have affected the way the news is reported through other mediums such as television as it is possible to send live images and information from across the world very quickly using modern high speed internet technology.

Many people who like to read online news will often make use of RSS feeds so that they can stay up to date with any developing stories that may interest them. Most news websites will provide an RSS feed which users can subscribe to using a specialist software package. These software packages are often referred to as feed readers and they are commonly available as a plug in for an existing web browser. News stories can then be read at their leisure through these programs. More and more people are making use of RSS feeds to read online news and some high end mobile phones now offer RSS capabilities.  RSS feeds are changing the way many people read the news and some online news websites have made changes in their reporting style to specifically suit people who use RSS feeds to read the news.

Many people make use of online news feeds in order to stay up to date with the headlines. News feeds are also frequently referred to as RSS feeds and they can be used by any website that is regularly updated with information. Because news websites often have constantly changing content it is possible to make use of RSS feeds in order to have changes and developments in the news sent directly to you. Most newspapers and television news programmes will run their own websites which will usually feature news feeds that their users can sign up for.

In order to make use of news feeds or any other type of RSS feed then you will be required to use a specialised piece of software designed to receive feeds which you subscribe to. The benefit of using these software packages is that you do not have to disclose your email address or any other personal details in order to receive your news feeds, you simply subscribe to the feeds you want using the program and then the updates can be read at your leisure.

Many web browsers, particularly the latest versions of popular browsers such as Firefox will have facilities built into them that allow people to subscribe to and read news feeds. Some browses will also allow their users to download specialised plug-ins for this purpose. This is often the most convenient and effective to way to stay updated on your favourite news feeds.