Facebook won’t hurt anyone

            Yesterday I was playing soccer with a group of my friends at North Central College. Although, I knew most of the people there were several ones I’ve met for the first time and so did many others in our group. We had a great time playing and all of us went to have a dinner together after the game. In a little while as everyone sat around a long table, ate and chatted all of us started to add each other to our Facebook friend’s lists. As everyone was handing their phone to the once they met for the first time book It’s Complicated by Dana Boyd immediately came up in my head. The author brought the idea of teenagers desperately wanting to be connected to likeminded people and stay social/public by using social networking. Indeed, we all decided to friend each other on Facebook and create our own group so that we can all communicate about the next time we going to play soccer together.  I think using social networks to connect with people in order to meet with them in real life is actually very valuable and convenient. It all took us no longer than ten minutes to create a social network connection via Facebook and it hopefully will lead to many more hours of fun playing soccer outside in the near future. People also posted pictures that were taken on the soccer field right there at the table which gave a good source of conversations and jokes among our group. I was really pleased to see Facebook being used for a good cause, although I know sometimes it’s a big distraction and source of many problems for students. I think as long as you don’t abuse use of Facebook and don’t take it too seriously Facebook won’t hurt anyone. Meaning that if you strictly use social networks for the purpose of communicating with people that otherwise it would be hard to communicate with in order to actually stay in touch and make a plan for meeting in real life, then social networks will only help you to manage your time, activities and connections to other people not hurting your social life outside of the web.      

Got News?

               Why do we trust what is being said on TV news? Well, there are huge TV channels out there where a lot of people work towards conveying message about what is happening in a country and the entire world. We trust people in the news because they seem very knowledgeable and trustworthy about the content they are talking about plus they support their announcements by broadcasting events’ videos and interviewing people participating in the event. However, there is an issue with what we see on the television today. I have an opportunity to see news from two different countries in their original language; the issue I’ve noticed is that news about the same events in the world maybe be told very differently in different countries. By cropping out some parts from a video that has been taken and finding people that will give needed information/opinion news channels’ reporters from all round the world manage to show an issue in the unique perspective. Some people may argue that this is randomness explained by differences in cultures. I think, this is strictly has to deal with politics and how it affects news in order to give people a certain understanding of the issue and making its own propaganda. News being told on television has a huge influence on people’s opinion and attitudes. However, I think today as people become more educated and curious, they start to wonder and want to know more about the world rather than to be content with what major TV channels give them. This could be a reason why people today go on different social media channels such as YouTube where people from all around the world are able to put their content to show the real situation in their country.

Got to help the victim first.

 “I have nobody…I need someone” -Amanda Todd; these words, in my opinion, are the key to a problem solution of the cyber-bullying. Danah Boyd argues that too much of publicity about the cyber bullying and regulations made in order to stop offenders and on-line predators do more harm than good for victims of online bullying. Although, certain actions must be done to stop cyber-bullying, I share Boyd’s opinion on that issue. I think that any drama involving teenagers must be solved in a very delicate way with as little publicity as possible. Public regulations such as “zero tolerance” policy deal with cyber bullying in a very broad manner excluding all of the unique nuances of the issue. Punishment of offenders will stop an offender, but it might not necessarily help the victim. In the example of Amanda Todd’s situation she was doing mistakes and bad decisions on her own that made people to turn away from her very quickly. If school where Amanda studied before she committed suicide was to punish all of the fifty students that were bullying poor fifteen year-old that could make the situation worth. Punishment of significant amount of students because of one person that no one cares about may arouse even larger student body hatred towards the victim. My solution to this problem is working with students and their parent individually. Students that are being bullied have to be assisted first. The key thing is to provide support for the victim and ensure that he or she doesn’t feel all alone facing the rough problems caused by cyber bullying. I believe that there were many more problems in Amanda’s story. From the video I understood that her parents were divorced and she felt very lonely living with her dad. No one helped teenage girl with the problem she couldn’t resolve on her own, her luck of knowledge and experience in this life led to bad decisions and anxiety. I believe that if victim is being assisted to not feel like victim, taught to look at the problem from a different perspective and showed how to make right choices in one’s life there will be less tragic stories like one of Amanda Todd.

Picture: http://www.inspiremalibu.com/anxiety-treatment-center/

"But first, let me take a selfie"

First few chapters of book It’s Complicated by Danah Boyd touched upon the reason teenagers put embarrassing pictures of themselves (or in other words selfies) on the social media. On the one hand, teens worry about their look and persona on-line, but on the other they put content that underminds their look and presentation. I want to expand on that interesting issue by analyzing the existence of ugly selfies on-line. To understand the phenomena of teens’ ugly selfies on the media I’ve looked into the article Why teens can't stop taking 'ugly selfies' by Jessica Bennett in DailyLife on-line magazine. Jessica Bennet argues that ugly selfies rebel against the cult of perfection and model looking in our society established in the last decade. Impact by perfect models on the media is crucial for teenager at the age of 11-14; few minutes of looking are enough to bring teenage girl’s self-esteem down. According to the article women are tired of the perfect and photoshoped faces that have caused so many concerns and worries among the women about their look. Today, women want to reveal reality and authenticity and “Ugly selfie” is the way of “rebounding from perfection fatigue”. I personally think that this is a good and bad tendency. I like the idea of authenticity and natural beauty. Girls and women should stop using Photoshop to make their body look skinnier or face prettier, they really need to start learning about loving their look and beauty that given them from the nature. However, I’m against going to the other side of the spectrum, from one extreme to another, from perfection to ugliness. Why can’t we simply be ourselves?