For the past hour, only the back of fourteen year old Tom Lau’s head has been visible. He’s not asleep, sedated, or watching TV. Lau’s eyes, glossed over by a pair of contact lenses, are fixated intently on one of the public computer screens at Bruggemeyer Library in Monterey Park.

Every few minutes, the sides of his cheeks expand into a slight smirk or a half smile as he types away in Facebook’s chat window.

For many of us more regular users, Facebook activity increases during the school year. With the onset of September, high school and college students alike welcome the quintessential homework, deadlines, stress, and sheer curiosity of new faces. Luckily for this generation, however, Facebook caters to all those aspects of our 21st century needs.

Before Facebook was open to the masses, the site served only college-age students who, presumably, encompassed a level of maturity proper for online interaction. After becoming public, Facebook’s popularity rocketed into a haven for anyone from the cashier at your local grocer, to the twelve year-old cousin you forgot you had. With the wide range of age demographic using social media; school officials, parents, and teachers are questioning the weight that these sites have on bullying-related incidents.

Despite being viewed as an easy harassment outlet, recent studies are shown to depict quite the opposite effect of social media. One study done by Cal State LA psychology professor, Kaveri Subrahmanyam, equates online interaction with proper social development, citing that teenagers’ interactions online, “strongly resemble their relationships offline.”

This, in essence, is to say that a bad seed is a bad seed no matter where it is planted.  In a July 2010 cyber-bullying attack, 11 year-old Jessica,  more popularly known as the Youtube video blogger Jessi Slaughter, became the target of online rumors and gossip. The matter escalated into sheer hilarity for viral video fanatics when her father insisted via-Youtube video that he “backtraced” Jessi’s anonymous haters.

Jessi, however, is a bad seed. A slight look into her online history shows videos of profanity, vulgarity, and sheer indecency for a pre-teen.

This, according to Subrahmanyam, would equate to her demonstrating unruly behavior both in person and in the online world. In turn, we can assume that her parents “dun goofed” in terms of good-parenting; proving that the internet is just another facet for bullies or teenage drama buffs to express their destructive behavior.

After enduring a series of glares when Irish teenager Phoebe Price committed suicide following harassment on her Facebook page, Facebook has shown that its’ power simply lies in its utilization—which need not always be negative. For instance, Alhambra High School teacher,

Victoria Wong, sees social media as a way for students to interact among each other to use these sites as an outlet for educational learning.

“I do feel that the pros outweigh the cons as far as these social media sites go that my students take part in,” said Wong. “I do know that some teachers have taken Facebook and incorporated it into class projects; such as, creating a Facebook page in history classes on iconic figures in history.”

So, for now, at Bruggemeyer Library, Lau clicks back and forth between his Facebook page and a Microsoft Word Document.  Who knows, both applications may be for educational use.