Quote

In the years when teenagers really need to be connected to somebody, they aren't; especially in small towns where kids are bored and look for something to get them going.

The biggest communities in which young people now reside are online communities.

I know that youngsters want to find something in common with each other and feel closer to each other ideologically through bridges such as the Internet.

For most people, using the Internet broadens their sense of who 'we' is and actually ends up leaving us in a place of greater compassion and understanding. It leaves us more connected to a larger group of people and more at one with a lot more people in our community.

There is no time and space in the digital world. People chat and collaborate through social networks. Cultural icons garner millions of fans online in locations they have often never been themselves. The boundary between public and private life is now everyone's business.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

I don't know why, but I'm continually amazed to think that two and a half billion of us around the world are connected to each other through the Internet and that at any point in time more than 30 percent of the world's population can go online to learn, to create and to share.

Everyone is on the internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the internet brings everyone into a shared space, it does not necessarily bring them together.

These sites have torn down the geographical divide that once prevented long distance social relationships from forming, allowing instant communication and connections to take place and a virtual second life to take hold for its users.

That's the beauty of the Internet is that we're no longer tied to our communities by physical connections.