Common Sense about Location Sharing

This week I did my presentation on TWITCHANGE and SOCIALGO. They are two websites that show the positive aspects of Social Networking sites. They both allow for good things to happen on the Internet. As I said in my presentation, Social Networking sites are good things as long as they are used in the right way. It is only when people take advantage of these sites that things can go drastically wrong. However, that is not the fault of the website, it is the fault of the person.

Today in class we discussed Location Sharing and how it influences and effects young kids and how it is being banned in several schools. I decided to do my own research on the effects of location sharing with kids. I found this website, which caters mostly to teachers and parents. Parents are typically not updated on what is going on online with their kids so this website tells them everything they need to know. The website gave several facts about kids sharing their locations and the facts kind of shocked me. They state that a 2010 study showed that 69% of kids, ages 13-17, included their physical location on their social networking status update. I am sure many parents were shocked to read this because I think parents (including my own) are clueless when it comes to how much information their kids can post on Facebook. I checked out my little brother's, who is 14, Facebook page and I was shocked about how many times he wrote exactly where he was on his status update..for example, his status over the weekend was "At the Eagles game with the fam." He basically just told the whole world that my house was empty and was going to stay empty for at least 4 hours till the game was over. The website also has a video that I think everyone should check out because it truly does inform parents and the rest of the world how scary it can be when a child post exactly where they are and exactly who they are with. I think a lot of kids do not see anything wrong with sharing their location because they see all of their peers doing the same thing.

Does not having a Facebook result in Social Suicide?

It sounds like a crazy questions but according to some people its totally true. I was shocked to find this article. It comes from a website called "College Candy" that has daily postings from various authors about different real world issues. This article claims that its only "weird" people that do not have Facebooks and she often wonders what is wrong with people that do not have Facebooks. She even compares people without Facebook to people who have never tried PB&J. In class we have discussed a lot of things about Facebook but we never really discussed how people are treated for not having a Facebook. I know one of my friends deactivated his Facebook for a couple weeks and he said he would never do it again...when I asked why he said "way too many people have asked me what happened to my Facebook and I am sick of it" he also said that his girlfriend accused him of being shady for deleting his Facebook. I couldn't help but think..well that is a little shady?? Then I took a second to realize that maybe he just wanted to concentrate on school and studying instead of constantly logging on Facebook. I think maybe I should try it and see how much better I do in school..it would be a good test. This author of the above linked article also asks the audience how they live without Facebook, I think that statement may have been a little extreme but at the same time I know so many people that I know would go crazy if Facebook ever went away. Everyone should also check out the comments below the article because it is interesting to see how different people feel on the subject of having/not having a Facebook.

We also talked about the creator of Facebook a lot in class so I went and did some of my own research on him. Most of the stuff was repetitive but I did find this from the NY Daily News. The article states that Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, CANNOT be blocked on Facebook. This is a little scary because it is possible to block every other Facebook member in the world. It just shows that he wants the users to know that he is in control and no matter how many privacy settings you enable, he will always have access. After I read this article I did try to block him and an "error" message came up, just as the article said would happen if someone tried to block him.

Social Networking sites being used for the WRONG reasons.

Today in class we talked a lot about things that have gone wrong because of social networking sites. For example, students getting expelled for their Myspace pictures or events and parties getting cancelled because of teachers or deans finding the event on Facebook. I decided to do some of my own research about "things gone wrong" when using social networking websites. I found many different websites/blogs/postings about people getting in trouble from different social networking sites. However, after sorting through all of them I found 2 particular websites that really stuck out and surprised me.

Over the summer one of my co-workers told me that she was fighting with her husband because of something he saw on Facebook. My co-workers ex-boyfriend (from high school) was sending her private messages on Facebook asking her to meet up and talk to him. My co-worker never responded to the messages but never the less her husband was upset by what he saw. She explained to me that since her husband is not an avid Facebook user he did not understand that Facebook is used for keeping in touch and getting back in touch with old friends. I found this website which claims that 1 in 5 divorces is blamed on Facebook these days. The author of this article said that "Divorce Online" did a study which is where they are getting these horrifying results. Kennan, the person who headed the study, claims that sexual and inappropriate Facebook chats were the most common reason for these Facebook divorces. Another interesting fact I learned from this website was that divorce lawyers now check the Facebook of the other spouse to see if they can use any evidence from their Facebook during the court hearing.

This next website I found really freaked me out. I had seen something on TV about this case but I never really knew the details of it. This case involves a mother creating a Myspace hoax to hurt the feelings of a 13 year old girl (her daughters friend). This mom tricked the young girl into thinking an older boy, named "Josh", liked her and then eventually broke her heart. This insecure 13 year old committed suicide because she was unable to deal with this heartbreak and loss of friendship. I could not believe that a parent, who had a daughter the same age, would ever do that to a young insecure girl dealing with depression. Here is the link to this CNN story.

Both of these situations have a common factor...they both involve adults. I want to point this out because I can not tell you the amount of times I have heard a teacher, parents, ect. say that young teens do not know how to handle social networking sites. In the two above examples, grown adults clearly do not know how to handle social networking sites. This just goes to show that age does not matter when it comes to social networking sites...a 14 year old has to hide their facebook when they may just be using facebook to meet new friends going into high school...where as a 40 year old adult should be the one thats regulated when they are using social networking sites to cheat on their spouse or making a fake Myspace account. I think the stereotype of young people doing "bad things" on social networking sites should disappear and we should start to examine why people of all ages are using social networking sites.

The "like" button is causing controversy.

We have been talking a lot about social networking websites in class the past few weeks so I decided to write my blog on one of the most popular social networking sites...Facebook. One of my friends had told me they heard something on the news about controversy with the "Like" button on facebook. I decided to look more into this and I was surprised to find that many legitimate websites talking about the "Like" button. I never really thought twice about using the "Like" button. In my eyes it was just an easier way to comment on a picture or post without really commenting. For example, instead of writing "cute picture" I would just hit the "Like" button. I never really "Liked" pages or celebrity fan sites, even thought I get tons of people inviting me to "Like" pages they "Like." Here are two of the most interesting websites I found on controversy, and even lawsuits, surrounded around the "Like" button.

This first case deals with minors using the "Like" button. This article discusses David Cohen v. Facebook. Cohen says that there are been millions of cases where Facebook has "misappropriated a minors name or likeness for profit." Naturally, Facebook fights back and releases this statement, "We believe this suit is completely without merit and we will fight it vigorously. The complaint misunderstands the law, it’s intent and the way Facebook works. For example, plaintiffs assert that minors are marketing Facebook through search engines but we do not allow minors to include their profiles in search engines,” said Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s manager of public policy communications. Cohen says he was fighting for all Facebook users, especially minors, who have been "used" by Facebook and other advertising companies. Here is the link to the article; http://mashable.com/2010/08/27/facebook-class-action-suit/.

The second article I found was on CNN's website. This article discusses how the "Like" button is a security issue. Since the "Like" button is now linked to other Webpages, it tracks all of the sites that are viewed by a particular user. According to this article, the Facebook Chief Executive said this like to other webpages makes Facebook and its users more "social." I never really considered that this was a security issue until I read this CNN site. I think after learning more about the "Like" button I have learned to be much more careful when using it. Here is the link to the CNN article; http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/06/02/cnet.facebook.privacy.like/index.html

Racism Online; Kanye West.

Today in class we discussed the Jessie Daniels article about cyberacism and propaganda. I never really knew much about racism online until I read this article and until we had a discussion about about it during class. I looked up some more information about cyber racism and came up with a few interesting recent issues of cyber racism. We all remember the Taylor Swift/Kanye West incident at the MTV video music awards. If you dont remember, here is a video of what happened. Kanye took the microphone from Taylor and gave a shout out to Beyonce. Obviously, many people were upset by this and felt really bad for Taylor Swift. It is a shame however that this incident turned into a race issue. Not only were people blogging/facebooking/twittering ect. about this incident no stop but it soon turned into a race war. People were saying crazy racist remarks (especially on Twitter) for all the world to see.

I found a link to this website. Someone actually hacked into Wikipedia and changed Kanyes biography. His edited Wikipedia page was full of racist remarks. It is sad that someone would go that out of their way over an incident at the VMA's, even Taylor said she was over it once he said he was sorry. The website asks people to share their thoughts on the updated Wikipedia page, mostly everyone that commented disagreed with what the hacker had done, thankfully! I also found another website that talks more about the racist comments left about Kanye on Twitter. Some of these are even worse than the Wikipedia page..and thats pretty bad. I was shocked when I read all about this racism that Kanye was dealing with online because it probably makes him, and a lot of other people, feel so hopeless. There is really nothing they can do to get these comments offline, because like it says on the website, there is freedom of speech and people can think and act as they want online. This can relate back to what we discussed today in class about propaganda websites. There is really nothing anyone can do about them, unless they violate copyright issues or something like that. We discussed how a political career can be ruined by a simple facebook page that is created with false facts. It is sad that the world has come to this but it is something we must be aware of. We do not want to fall into the trap of propaganda.

Child Safety Online

We have been talking about online bullying for a while now, it comes up almost every time we discuss online security. I decided to write my blog on this because I was just talking with my parents last night and they just had to go to a "Cyber Bullying Information Session" for my brothers grade school. My brother is in 8th grade and apparently the have been having some issues in his school with cyber bullying. My parents are both pretty good with the computer and are usually pretty up on current events but they were shocked after this information session. They had no idea that any of this was going on, they were shocked that kids could be this mean to each other via the Internet. They also told me that during the meeting they talked about Skype and how it is becoming a problem because now kids are torturing other kids face-to-face. I was even shocked to hear this because I had no idea that people are using Skype for all the wrong reasons. The teachers and administrators giving the information session suggested that each parent limit their child's internet use to one hour per day and that they should have to sit in a common room of the house, not up in their rooms where they could be up to no good.

I decided to do some of my own research about how parents can keep their children safe online and keep them away from bullies or internet predators. I found this website. It is a link off of Microsoft's website and it is very helpful for parents who are trying to protect their kids. It basically goes through and gives age groups and how strict/not strict a parent should be with their child (when it comes to the Internet) at each child's particular age. For example, at age 11-14 parents should make sure that they talk to their teens and let them know what is acceptable and what is not, like what websites they are allowed on and what they aren't. Microsoft also suggests that all teens should have to keep their computers in a common room, not just in their bedrooms..which is the same thing they told my parents at their information session.

Overall, I think parents just need to watch closely what kids are doing. Parents, like my own, are always shocked when topics like this come up. Parents should do their best to stay up to date on what is going on with their child's age group. Even if it starts a fight with the child there should be controlled online use, there is no need for a child to stay online for 6 hours a day, they should be outside playing with friends or hanging out with family. All that time online at such a young age can never be a good thing.

Personalization Throughout the Years

We have discussed personalization many times throughout the semester but one thing I was curious about was how is has changed since the Internet has been active. For as long as I can remember I have been able to "personalize" my computer and internet choices. Now I can pretty much narrow every website I look at to be the way that I want it and to show the information that I want to see. For example, if I am on Facebook I can click "Hide Jen" if I do not want to read information about my friend Jen. I know many of my friends have used this method to get over ex boyfriends... although I am not sure how much "hiding" them will help the situation.

Since I was not really able to find information online about how personalization has changed throughout the years I decided to do some personal interviews with friends and family members who range from ages 35-60. I first explained to them what personalization was and then I asked them if they use it in their everyday Internet lives, I also asked them if personalization was popular when they were my age. Here are the responses I got...

"I use it everyday, especially with the news websites, some mornings I just want happy news and I don't want to read the depressing stories. I just recently discovered that personalization existed and just started personalizing the things I read about 2 months ago."

-Lori, age 36.

"I do not use personalization, maybe I am old school. I think that you should see and read as much as you can, even if it doesn't interest you. I never used it growing up either, I was always encouraged to read and study as much as I could..no matter what topic it was on."

-Tom, age 48.

"I am not that great with the computer but I think I personalize when I am reading magazines and the newspaper. I usually only read the sections that interest me."

-Felicia, age 60.

I found this mini survey to be very interesting. It seems that everyone still feels so different on the issue of personalization. I also realized that just because some people are not on the computer everyday that does not mean they do not personalize, even though the computer makes it extra easy to do. You can personalize your newspapers and magazines and even books. I agree that people should have a little knowledge on every topic so that they can know how to communicate with others, and have the "common experience" like Sunstein thinks we should have. Sunstein makes some great points about personalization and he has the power to really make you think about how diverse/not diverse the life you are living is.