Monday, July 23, 2012
Generation Online
A New World exists today, and it’s called the
Internet. This generation of kids has flocked to it in droves, especially to social
networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Parents barely have
the same computer savvy to keep up and this unknown world to them seems to hold
nothing but trouble for their children. Social networking has its pros and
cons, some that parents are aware of and some that are unique since the
Internet allows people to act in ways they never would happen in person. For
example, cyber-bullying and suicide assistance websites. The Internet can bring
out the good or bad in kids. Parents are trying to find ways to protect their
kids all the time. Especially with all the things they can access. Kids
gain the ability to stay in touch with one another, have access to a huge
amount of knowledge and other benefits. On the other hand, kids can become
targeted by anonymous strangers, constant usage of the Internet has shown cases
where kids become wrapped up in their online lives and disinterested in their
offline lives and other actions which affect them negatively. Social networking
seems almost like an oxymoron when some of these kids just get more
"friends", like on Facebook, just to say they have a lot of them but
don’t even know half of the people they share their personal lives with on a
daily basis. All this networking seems to just take place online without any
real person to person contact. The privacy of one's home is non-existent with
kids chatting at school then at home constantly viewing each other via webcams,
sending illicit pictures on occasion and a variety of things that most wouldn’t
dare do except for having this feeling of safety that doing certain actions
over the internet doesn’t come with consequences. Social networking is where
kids hold conversations, meet new people, put out their thoughts, and many
other things which are unique to this generation and will continue on to future
kids. Now, I don’t think the internet needs to be restricted, but educating
kids on certain etiquette to give them a better understanding that their online
selves and offline selves shouldn’t be so different and to try to balance the
two without having them come into conflict.
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I liked the last sentence you said: "their online selves and offline selves shouldn't beso different and try to balance the two," really well said! I agree that social networking could be dangerous, and it is a lot of times. But I think kids making "friends" online and they don't have a clue who they're, because they don't have that communication at home and they dont feel they are being understood. There's nothing wrong for parents to be concerned what their kids are doing online and trying to protect them, it is their responsibility to care about their children. But kids, especially teenagers, take the care in a totally different way, and build a wall around them and don't wanna share their secrets with their family members, they rather share it with some strangers! I agree with Claude and think that Internet and social networking should help children and adults to develop intellectually and use in better way, so the tragic situations like suicides won't happen.
ReplyDeleteI think when we are growing up, we all have some secrets that we don't want to tell our parents but share with our friends instead. For example, there are somebody who like to write dairy to exchange with their friends but never want their parents to read it. It's the same reason that teenagers never want their parents to know what they are doing online and who they are talking with. But there are still many dangerous online because the Internet is so public, the kids can be mislead by some of the dangerous website like cyber-bullying and suicide assistance websites. Therefore, parents also need to protect their Children. Like Claude said "but educating kids on certain etiquette to give them a better understanding that their online selves and offline selves shouldn’t be so different and to try to balance the two without having them come into conflict." Instead of stealing their secrets, talking to them and help kids to built up the correct concept to Internet and even to the entire society is more important.
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