Isiah’s Blog

well…let’s see.

about me? there’s not much.

I’m quiet. I do homework. I have social  life too. not as much as other people. I think history is boring. politics too. i don’t like math (who does?) but i like art and writing fictions and japanese stuff. i play piano (not well) and i like playing badminton and swimming and volleyball.  well…mostly, the things that affected my personality are the japanese stuff and reading fictions (classical, modern, poetry, etc).

I have only one sister and I have a REALLY big family. I cant even keep track of where they are now. ^^. I’m in grade 12 and I came from philippines. I’m a girl (since you might not know  who this is and judge my gender by my name ^^).

please tell me what you think.

Internet, ever since it started getting popular in the 1990’s, has been affecting each individual’s life gradually. It has been used for communication (e.g. email), streaming media (e.g. music, videos and ads) and as a source of information (e.g. researches). However, the usefulness of this “tool” grew to be more than an inconvenience to some people, particularly those who are being targeted online. These predicaments that most people face include cyber crimes and even deprivation of healthy life. Internet also grew to be a community for the youths, which are often made of groups of individuals who share interests and outlooks.

People, specifically the youths are being influence the most by the internet. Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and Bebo were most visited by and applied to by teenagers. Here, they can make a virtual image of themselves and who they want their selves to be. In the physical world, the reality, due to cliques and peers, individuals often suppress their true self to show since they are afraid whether or not they would be accepted, harassed or ignored. With having anonymity in the web, they can be who they are, or, in some cases where the individuals do not like their own personality, create a whole new trait without having to parallel their original one.

There are plenty of examples of these cases seen in movies and documentaries. “Growing Up Online” talked about how the teens’ lives mostly revolve around media, particularly the Internet. One character, as known in the net, is Autumn Edows. In real life, she was constantly shied away from, but as Edows, she was rather famous and well-liked. Her persona changed dramatically from the conservative young girl sitting on a bench (from a photograph) to the seductively posed model.

In this documentary, there are few examples of how the adolescents’ lives are tightly intertwined with internet. A teenage boy, just an average high-schooler (who even uses Sparknotes to prepare for his test) has a very stern mother. In his case, his relationship with his family is slowly fading away to the point of him having going to a concert with alcohol. Here, the audience will see just how much he loosened his ties. Having a strict parent, he would not be easily able to go to any concert, let alone a concert with alcohol. However, because of the internet’s influence and the social networking, those ties were severed and he attended the event.

The strongest example in the video is the person who was being bullied. To his peers, he might have been very feminine looking, thus he gets teased about it. He wanted his father to teach him wrestling so he could defend himself from those bullies, but what he could not defend himself from are those verbal harassments from the social network he joined in the internet. Soon enough, he joined a community where death and suicide are the common interest of people, which lead to his self-inflicted demise. His identity went from cheerful to melancholic.

In other cases of identities that are not seen in the documentary, the one holding a dangerous part is when stalkers pretend to be someone of a younger age. This way, they can get hold of their victims much easier.

Moving on from identities, internet caused several negative impacts on the society. One minor problem is that people do not use their own much more useful resources and instead, they depend on what the internet is providing them. The information acquired from the internet is mostly second-hand information, thus they cannot be very reliable. Because of this dependence, people do not get to go out and do an actual search. This causes lethargy and other body problems which can lead to obesity or a weak immune system.

Furthermore, internet and the social networking may cause cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is when youths receive mortifying remarks through the internet that harms them psychologically and emotionally, resulting in both emotionally and psychologically instability. They will often believe those messages and refer to themselves as worthless, unloved, uncared for or whatever message they got. By receiving these kinds of abuse is much more hurtful than receiving physical abuse. Nevertheless, it will have a lasting impact on the victim and may even lead to suicide.

Most adolescence is exposed to pornography. With the average age of 17 ½, most teenage boys and girls have already had their intercourse and that 80%, by the age of 20, is already sexually active. Since most of the time in the internet, parents do not have a control over what their children are surfing, they are not able to prevent their children from coming across sites with carnal suggestions and activities. From videos, to music, to books and even to the unwanted pop-ups, most sites have the sexual messages broadcasted. These causes the adolescence to be exposed in the world of maturity and therefore, by feeding their curiosity, they are willing to try new experiences. However, in some cases, especially the young, have been a victim of pornography. The criminal takes pictures of those kids and post them on the internet. This is an example of sexual abuse.

Cyber crimes are slowly escalating. Cyber crimes are committed to three targets: person, property and government. Crimes committed against persons include cyber bullying and pornography and cyber harassment about race and religion. Vandalism and transmission of computer virus are part of the crime committed against property. Lastly, hacking and cracking codes as well as money laundering make up the group of crime against the government.

Because of these, there is a big question about the future of the youths and their ties with media. Is the media affecting the youths or are the youths affecting the media? Is the technological world improving to satisfy the youths’ needs or are the youth just relying more and more on them?

These questions often haunt the adult’s generation – the parents. The parents are concerned about their children’s well-being and how the internet and media play the major part of influencing their children’s life. Those children fail to realize the danger of the internet and social networking. Even though they listen to the advices such as “Don’t talk to strangers”, they still fail to recognize that there are more other dangers that do not include stalkers.

In the future, as humans try to improve the technology, people would have a much easier life and there would be plenty of efficiency to work. However, as these – technologies – improve, media would follow suit and the internet would not be far behind. Meaning that internet would grow and the problems mentioned above would as well.

What I’m going to put in my essay:

-influence of internet

-Growing up online (documentary)

-cybercrimes

-future

Ahh….identities.

Well, this topic just reminded me of that video on youtube that I saw. There was this guy (or girl) who commented on it and the message was just cruel. VERY mean. The person (I don’t know whether he’s a he or she’s a she) was bashing this singer based on the singer’s race. I was just offended so I started talking back. I was just lashing out at the person (obviously I have a pen name ^^).

ANYWAYS, back to the topic.
Identities. right.
In my opinion, people have different identities. They make one where they completely feel like themselves the most and the other persona…it depends on who they want them to be. Most of the time, people are in their “truest” selves when they are anonymous since those people cannot be who they want to be around their peers. Which I think is just a shame – that they have to pretend just to be accepted where, I assume, they do not even feel comfortable. (***I mean, how can anyone be comfortable not being themselves???).

I’ve watched plenty of documentaries and this one didn’t make me sleepy. Since my sister did this last year, I get to talk to her about it. It was interesting. Especially those different kinds of identities. I knew there were different kinds, such as goth, nerd, jock and whatnot, but I’ve never really KNOWN why they were like that. Personality has something to do with them, yes, but after I’ve watched the show, I found out that those identities also has something to do with their relationships – families, friends, lovers, and even TOTAL STRANGERS.

I really feel sorry for the father of the guy who committed suicide. It was upsetting to watch that the guy actually committed suicide because of cyber bullying. The girl was so fickle!!! She was playing with EMOTIONS. And not just emotions, with the person’s way of thinking too!! The mother? Well…I have to say she went overboard. But I can see her view. She was just being protective of her children. She was just being a mother.