Growing Up Online is about how a new generation is growing up using computers on a daily basis, the effects the internet has on their social lives, and how it creates a huge generation gap between the youth and their parents. People now begin using social media sites at much younger ages than before. They use them for any number of reasons, but most commonly to interact with friends outside of school. Ironically, people spend so much time on social media, that they end up missing chances to have real interactions with family or friends in the same room. Teens may use the internet as a means to vent about their daily lives, develop an alternate persona, while others experience cyber-bullying, which is basically bullying through the internet.
1) “Parental concerns over media now center on the Internet, particularly in relation to values, commercialism, privacy and, most of all, sexual material” (Livingstone, 18). Some parents also fear online predators and cyberbullies. Children and teens spend increasingly more time on the internet, and that may concern some parents as to what their children could possibly be doing all those hours alone. Other parents believe “ that computers pose health hazards, developmental problems, stunt the imagination, isolate children from the adult world and so forth, although little evidence is cited in support of this alternative view or and none has shown that ICTs undermine traditional learning.” (Livingstone, 16)
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2) I do think that finding material online and copying it for your assignment is cheating. A person who does that is not doing the work asked, and it not critically thinking. I liked the idea of having students write as much as possible in class. Students could also be given individualized assignments. This obviously would work better in small classes. This wouldn’t need to be done with each assignment, but for example, in an essay, each students has a slightly different prompt. Another relatively simple step to preventing plagiarism is for the teachers to also not plagiarize. Some teachers will copy exactly the same homework assignments, quizzes, or even tests, from the textbook or online. Most textbooks will offer answer pages at the end, and if the test, or assignment was copied off another website, there is sure to be several websites that provide free answers to those questions to use as study guides, that are easy to locate. They aren’t meant as a means to cheat, in fact, some websites offer practice quizzes or tests based on a chapter, and give the answers and explanations after submitting. Teachers often go and use those same questions all from the same assignment. Or with assigning essays, try to come up with a unique topic, rather googling good topics online. If you looked up the prompt, a student can also look up an essay written on that prompt. Teachers need to be familiarized with how the latest uses of the internet can be used for cheating. If they know they system, it becomes a little harder to be fooled by it.
3) In a way it is understandable if it would be considered wrong to use websites like Spark notes, but both sides have to be looked at. No, they aren’t reading the assignment as directed, but teachers can really be unrealistic about how much time there is in a day, particularly how much time can be directed towards reading large chapter books. I understand his guilt, as it is nothing to be proud of, especially if you never read the actual material, as he does. I think that if students had more time to do things like read large books for a single assignment, they would, I personally have had many instances in high school where I struggled to keep up with the reading projects because of a lack of time. I love reading, and would only choose books for an assignment that I enjoyed reading about, but even that wasn’t enough. I only stayed after school a couple days per week, and it was mostly spent doing homework, and yet it is still hard to find the time to complete it all. Yes he should feel guilty over never reading, but schools and teachers should include eating, sleeping, and social life (at least with family), when creating lesson plans.
4) I think it’s fair to consider people like Edows to be celebrities. To be perfectly honest it doesn’t matter to me either way. In current times, everyone wants to be known as unique and to have the whole world know their uniqueness. That’s impossible in reality, as everyone cannot be known by everyone. If someone manages to become famous and praiseworthy (although I don’t consider Edows or most other famous people to be praiseworthy), then yes they can be called celebrities. They should not be considered celebrities if they make, or were featured on one or two videos that went viral because they made fools of themselves. But if they are still being talked about years down the road, then perhaps. Achieving fame through the internet has in a way affected our values as a society. Now people are convinced that with just the right video made just the right way, they too can become famous and possibly rich. There are enough examples of people who have become “successful” through those means. People who are overnight celebrities. Thankfully though, that fame only lasts a short while. But the ones who were in the video become hooked, and crave more attention. Not to mention the millions of dollars some Youtubers receive for having several thousand views on their videos, which is another huge incentive
5) A Syrian father of two was seen selling pens while holding his sleeping four year old daughter Reem. The activist who saw him took a photo and posted it on Twitter asking people to donate to help this refugee take care of his family. Once the photo was posted, there were many requests to re-locate the man so he would be able to receive funding. After a 2 day search they located him and his daughter, and told people on Twitter that he was found. Within 30 minutes, they reached their goal of $5,000, and within 24 hours had raised $80,000. The father, Abdul, said he could finally send his two children to school with the money. He also plans to help other refugees with the funding. This young girl and her family can now be much more at ease with their necessities taken care of.
6) The girl who flirts online and latter says she was joking, was experiencing several of the disinhibition effects. Particularly invisibility and dissociative personality. She is a lot more open and flirtatious online and behaves in ways that she wouldn’t behave face to face, indicating dissociative personality. The reason she gives for this misleading flirting is that “no one can do anything, you're at your house, they’re at their house”. This also has to do with invisibility, as she feels more comfortable expressing herself when nobody can see or hear her. I think it is both disinhibition effects as not only does she feel comfortable being open because of invisibility, she is creating a persona slightly different from her own by being flirtatious when she ordinarily wouldn’t be.
7) I have not seriously thought of completely disconnecting from all online technology. I did consider, and succeeded in staying off of Facebook. Although family members do occasionally convince me to get back on because they want to keep in contact with me there. The way I see it is many people weren’t using the website to keep in contact with me anyway, so it shouldn’t make a huge difference. I also had the phone numbers of everyone I cared to keep in contact with, or I knew the number of someone who could provide it for me. In most cases, if I didn’t have a person’s number, it’s because I hardly contacted them anyway, so they wouldn’t miss me. It was hard staying off the website at first, but then I reminded myself that I never wanted a Facebook account in the first place, and it has brought very little benefit in my life. I simply wasted lots of time on there reading things I didn’t care much or anything about. To me it was a huge time waster, and a distraction from more important things in life. No I wouldn’t completely disconnect, however if it was for a challenge, I do think I could do it. I’m not one of those people who have to send a text message, photo, ext. to people every 10 minutes or less. In fact, I use my phone so little at times that I may have someone call my phone 5 or 6 times a day because I keep losing track or it. Some people on the other hand, use their phone so much that it would be very difficult to catch them in a scenario where they don’t know where their phone is. I personally hope I never need to disconnect because of an addiction (such as being on social media), however if some people I trust suggested it, I probably would.
