lucknow congratulations started pouring in when he was voted the cutest guy among a group of 125 friends inflated with pride manish even wrote a thanks speech even though he had not seen most of the friends who voted for him perplexed in reality the entire thing happened virtually manish was the winner of a quiz conducted on a social networking site of which he is a member and has a huge friend list of 125 people he is just one of the thousands of youth in lucknow who spend most of their leisure time hooked onto these social networking sites in fact manish a student of class 10 boasts of being a part of all the social networking sites creating ripples among the netizens the concept has crept into the city very fast with most of the youngsters creating their profiles to come in contact with the world according to a survey conducted by tata consultancy service tcs recently 93 students in lucknow are aware of social networking sites this is as high as metro cities where 71 students spend more than 30 minutes online daily facebook and orkut are the most popular social networking sites though im a member of many sites orkut and facebook are my favourites said 22yearold meghana sharmasimilarly myspace friendster bigadda bebo hi5 and now twitter all provide new ways to communicate and share information besides exploring the interests and activities of others some feel that these sites are a mere timepass while some consider them to be a serious forum but many feel that such sites have become an indispensable part of their lives i despise the quizzes on facebook but sometimes what begins as a quick hello on the site evolves into a serious and a meaningful correspondence later said diksha kamra who works in a media company another trend being noticed is that more the number of celebrities linked to a site more is the number of youngsters joining it initially i was not interested in twitter but when i learnt that priyanka chopra priety zinta ar rehman asin and many other film stars were its members i too created my profile on it and now my friends are following me this in fact gives me a feel of celebrity said preeti singh while youngsters swear by the various interactive features of these sites parents and teachers are more concerned about their sideeffects teacher in a private school geeta saini says most of the students sit late night surfing chatting updating profiles and writing scraps in the meantime they ignore their studies and do not perform well in examinations sudha sinha mother of 13yearold ravi complains my son sits on his computer the moment he returns from school and does not even go out to play safety of these social networking sites too is a matter of concern for teachers and parents tv channels have reported some notorious incidents emerging out of these sites geeta feels that only a small