I've learned some serious lessons in the last 24 hours.
First of all, the Internet is a very delicate and frightening place. There are far too many people willing to post pictures of themselves naked in places where just anyone could stumble across them. Don't get me wrong, the human body is beautiful thing regardless of shape or size, but as an 18 year old I have the experience and maturity to come to that conclusion. An eight year old does not. Nor do most 14 year olds, for that matter.
And nobody should be exposed to such sexually explicit content without warning.
Furthermore, the potentially questionable content posted to the Internet needs to be given serious consideration by whoever is making the post. Who are your readers? What are the consequences of such material being associated with you?
Believe me, I'm all for freedom of expression and free speech, and I take censorship with a sizeable grain of salt. But rights always come with responsibilities.
Secondly, I strongly advise against making blog posts or tweets or facebook statuses or whatever when in an impulsive mood or unstable emotional state. The Internet is a vortex of permanency - once something is up there, there is no guaranteed way to remove it.
I've written some pretty awful things for fanfiction.net (yes, I've wandered that dark valley) but the shoddy writing of my 15 year old self pale in comparison to the verbal, emotional, and psychological bashing that people dish out on a fairly regular basis. No one is likely to go searching for a poorly constructed story that I wrote, and have since removed. If they did, I'm sure it could be located with relative ease - provided the right programs were at hand. The only result of that would be some amusement on the reader's part, and some embarrassment for me.
But insults, hurt feelings, and threats are impossible to erase. Once seen, they cannot be unseen, and are rarely forgotten.
There are no closed doors with the Internet. What we post is, inevitably, viewable by all, and not all that we post is appropriate.
Nor does the fact that it's "just the Internet" excuse anything we make available to other users. You wouldn't walk around downtown Edmonton (or wherever) completely naked. Why? Because it's a public place, obviously.
Then what makes you think it is appropriate to display yourself so casually over the Internet, a place equally as (if not more so) public?
People have committed suicide over things posted via the Internet, whether with hurtful intentions or not. Lives are ruined, and sometimes the shield of anonymity that the screen provides is little comfort when faced with the fact that the person on the other end knows exactly who their attacker is.
Another thing to consider is that, regardless who we really are, people who are not personally known to us (and by "personally" I mean have actually met in the physical world) are quick to make judgments of our character through what we make available to them through the Internet. Predators are everywhere, and the Internet is the ultimate of back-alleys. Never mind saying something unflattering about your ex boyfriend on facebook... some of what you post can put you in a potentially dangerous situation, without you ever knowing.
Profile pictures would be a lot different if all the 13 year-olds taking pictures of themselves in their bathroom mirrors knew that somewhere, there was potentially a pedophile looking at those very same photos, this exact moment.
Or would they?
Somehow we seem to have the mentality that because the Internet is so impersonal, that the screen is only a one-way path, and that what we do has no real consequence.
In the virtual world, when will reality start to compute?
Your blog is very eye opening, I would love to have my younger cousins read this post. I look back to Hi5, myspace and all of the social networking sites everyone had in junior high and think about the minimal knowledge any of those 12-15 year olds had about the dangers of the internet. I looking back at my school years I remember schoolmates with racy pictures on their profiles and comments that I'm sure they would regret.
ReplyDeleteAs teacher's I think se should begin to teach students about the dangers and issues associated with the internet at a young age. Preferably before middle school starting around grade 3, due to the access that children are getting at such young ages.
You have raised some interesting questions. I would like to say a debate, however I do not believe we have debated the heart of the matter. We use technology for a number of reasons, but when it comes to social networking sites, most of us use these sites to portray an image of ourselves. This is an image which we wish the world to see. I myself (for the little time I had one) only posted pictures that I look half decently attractive. I of course would never post racy or provocative pictures (I would never take them either), but for most of the other online world, people do. We often look at the scandalous taboo pictures of celebraties in magazines and think of how inappropraite they look, and yet the general population are posing for the exact photos and then posting them on the internet. For the times people look/feel horrible in person, they use the handy tool of a camera to capture the moment where they have their hair/makeup done, and are posed in a flattering way; they do this in hopes that their social standard will reflect something that is desireable to others. For all the people that we call "ill" out there, the predators if you will, we considering telling our children they are out there and not to pose/ present racy photos on the itnernet. But what about the men/women who do not get off at merely naked/half naked photos of teenagers or children, what about the ones who need a face? It is not reasonable to get rid of tools. I do not believe the internet is the problem, I believe the problem is that we as s society, we as a world for the most part are not mature. We look at the "ill" and try to find ways of protecting our children, blaming our inability to present ourselves a certain way as their fault, yet we never look at ourselves and think, "we are the ill ones". I wish our wisdom guided our strength in today's world, unfortunately, it seems our strength passes our wisdom.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the comment about how the real problem might be the users, rather than the tool.
ReplyDeleteThe old joke is to be "smarter than the machine", right? Well, unfortunately most of us aren't. Taking both these comments into consideration, I'm a little appalled at the thought of 12 year olds with social networking sites. Outrageous! I wasn't even allowed facebook until I was 16 or so. Even getting my first cellphone at 13 seems a little too early now that I look back on it. Had my mother realized just how little I'd actually use it for the intended reason she gave it to me, I doubt I'd have been given one until much later.
First thing, parenting as a whole needs a complete makeover. Discipline, obedience, and maturity are slowly slipping away from the future generations, and this is a great shame.
Secondly, people need to pay more attention to the information that's out there about proper use of the Internet, and pass on this information.
We cannot, unfortunately, eradicate the sick people from the world and create a purely safe environment for our children to grow up in. But we can arm them with understanding.