Facebook post gets worker fired

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/columnists/20090309_Gonzo___Cold_Eagles_sure_are_thin-skinned.html

This story has been getting an inordinate amount of press. Today the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story on a man, Dan Leone (32 years old), was fired after six years of working at the Eagles' stadium.

Life-long Eagles fan Leone was upset because the Eagles had allowed one of his favorite players, Brian Dawkins, to sign with Denver Broncos. Leone turned to Facebook to vent his frustrations. He set his status as "Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver...Dam Eagles R Retarded!!"

Leone has admitted that was a "mistake" and that he cleared his status shortly there after. Somehow it got back to the Eagles organization and Leone was terminated without a warning, suspension or even a face-to-face meeting.

The article argues that, since the Eagles only defense was a statement that "Dan was a seasonal game-day employee and not a full time member of the Eagles staff," they are saying that part time employees are disposable.

But the message the Eagles sent seems to say more than just that. The Eagles have communicated how powerful Facebook can become. We always hear how inappropriate material on a facebook profile can deter admissions at universities from accepting kids, or even how college students applying for a job can be hurt by the content of their facebook profile but this is a new benchmark. This 32 year-old man had been working the same job, with no known complaints, for six years and was suddenly fired because of a sentence (fragment) posted (temporarily) on facebook.

Facebook should remain a venue for social interaction and expressing opinions. It should not become grounds for unemployment in our society.

Facebook: watching the watchers

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070612.wlfacebook12/BNStory/lifeFamily/home

I started reading this article because the tagline is "Parents who go online to snoop on their kids are having the tables turned on them."

While the piece begins with the funny anecdote of an older woman who gets facebook and starts annoying her kids by leaving comments about how inappropriate her daughters pictures in bathing suites are and other photo comments and wall posts you might expect to get from a matronly woman. She then reaches a point where she grows tired of her kids leaving comments on her wall making fun of her photos and low number of friends.

The article goes on to to discuss how Facebook could lead to changes in family dynamics with multiple generations and extended relatives befriending each other on Facebook.

The article discusses how having parents on facebook will only cause some kids to exercise their privacy options while other kids and parents report that facebook has actually brought them together. The author's take is that Facebook could very well help bridge some of generation gap.

My parents do not have facebook and I have not had to confront that issue. I was wondering if any of you guys are Facebook friends with a parent and can attest that being a positive or an annoyance in your relationship with your parents.

Blogging and Offline Activities

Excerpt from the Pew article: 

  

"However, we have yet to see compelling evidence that these highly wired teens are 

abandoning offline engagement with extracurricular activities in favor of having more 

screen time. In fact, in many cases, those who are the most active online with social 

media applications like blogging and social networking also tend to be the most involved 

with offline activities like sports, music, or part-time employment.  

This is certainly the case with blogging, where those who are most active offline also 

appear to have the most to share online; 35% of teens who engage in three or more extra 

curricular activities keep a blog compared with 26% of those who participate in one or 

two activities outside of school. Just 20% of teens without any engagement in sports, 

clubs, youth groups, or any other extracurricular activity have created a blog."

This is an interesting segment to me.  It's another statistic that may have conflicting findings from different studies conducted by different groups, but if this is indeed widely the case, then it is quite notable.

What is it about teens who are more involved in their social lives that calls them to be more involved on the internet, as noted by Pew's findings from bloggers?

However, what might be most interesting about this is the idea that these are the teens that are spending daily time on the internet, yet they are also widely active while offline. How does this compare with our studies on the internet effecting the social engagement of teenagers?

There are old people on facebook?

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/272/report_display.asp

This article is discussing adults rise in social network use and since we have been looking specifically at young adults it surprised me to find out that number of adults on social networks is actually higher than adolescents. The statistics given in the Pew center article are 35% of adults as compared to 75% of adolescents on social network sites, but adults make up for more of the population so that percentage represents a higher number.
What grabbed my attention in this article was that most, adults restrict their profiles for only friends to view, as opposed to teenagers who want attention from as many people possible. Also I began to wonder if kids and parents were both on social networks, would they be friends? Are parents going to start to monitor their children's Internet activities? since the majority kid's time today is spent on the Internet, will families also began to gather that way? maybe the next thing on the development list is a family networking sight, then you could have Internet reunions, stay in touch with international relatives, and promote family bonding. ( If this comes out, I claim original idea rights!)

The good and the bad of Internet use.

 

I found this article back in January, and misplaced it until now.  It shows correlation between media and “ill effects” during childhood through numerous studies and the effects. 

In studies, increased media exposure in youth is linked to an increase in the following:  Childhood obesity, tobacco use, sexual behavior, drug use, alcohol use, low academic achievement, and ADHD.

Let me remind you, as they do in the article that “correlation does not equal causation.”  And in fact, several studies found positive conclusions for children using the Internet.  I also found this article on how some studies show that Internet-use is important for teen development including literacy and learning!

Internet-use is important for teen development

I think the important thing to take from this article is that children learn from their environment.  So being aware is better than censoring. 

Media-Youth ill effects correlation study

Social networking sites infantilizing the human mind?

The article attached, titled “Facebook and Bebo risk “infantilising” the human mind,” warns that social networking sites can potential change the way our brains work.  Our brains are sensitive to the outside world, molding and shaping into what we present to it.  Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, expresses concern on how these various sites, and the Internet in general is negatively changing us, and generations to come.

Greenfield states that children’s time spent on social networking sites “are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance.  As a consequence, the mid-21^st century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity.”

I think we are familiar with the outlook on new media and short attention spans, due to fast graphics and rapid delivery.  But have we processed how this will continue to effect children, other than medication?  Children are so interactive today classrooms are molding to fit to the child’s learning style, rather than the child molding to the teaching method.  Drivers, work places, and continuous realms will be affected in ripples.

I found the next couple of points Greenfield made fascinating.  She goes on to discuss how for children today on the web and video games, everything is reversible; therefore there are no consequences.  Children seek the final reward, and the thrill.  She says, “ The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction.”

Loss of empathy is the next risk she addresses—she talks about children reading novels less.  In games the goal is to do the task—rescue the damsel—and be rewarded; where in reading a book the goal is to find more out about the damsel, and express genuine concern for her.

And lastly, she addresses the shaky sense of identity, which we have discussed.  Finding approval on the Internet is easy so is communicating, but after all face-to-face communication is vital is self-identity, and that is becoming less and less.

"Facebook "infantilising" the human mind"article

Digital Images - stills and videos - have a big role in teen life

This title comes from a section in Pew's article. It goes on to say that boys are avid users of video-sharing websites such as YouTube. Girls are users too, of course, but boys are much more likely to upload and share videos.

Back to the title statement: Still and video images are a big part of teen life and are seemingly quite the hobby among teens today. The Pew article says that often the posting of videos on the internet leads to virtual conversations between the poster and various users who have viewed the video and have left feedback. There we go wanting feedback again. We've all been on YouTube and Yahoo videos watching various clips and have read long threads of comments left by numerous users. Have you ever come across a video on YouTube and the comments section was a long thread between the poster and a single user who viewed the video? Their conversations started out about one thing, typically, but have advanced into other areas. It's interesting to read the ones you come across and wonder what each person is getting from that conversation with a user that either have never met before. Isn't that the very reason for posting videos online in the first place? We get interaction with someone else, whether we know them or not, and that fulfills a need. It's the same concept in social networking sites where we become online friends with people and wait to receive textual comments from them providing feedback for whatever we just posted that they saw/read.

Humans, by nature, are social beings. Teenagers, by nature, are social machines.

I ran across this article, which reported on Pew's studies of teens and social media. This article had many statistics that I'd seen before in our common readings or elsewhere but some that still stood out. For instance: teenage girls blog more (35%) than teenage boys (20%), teenage boys are twice as likely as girls to post videos online (19% to 10%) because of their greater visual fascination.

Stats are nice, but what really grabbed my attention was the emphasis of feedback. According to the report teenagers love receiving feedback, and social media like YouTube, myspace, or facebook in particular, provide them with the ideal feedback-producing system. Teens post videos on youtube or their myspace and facebook profile pages and they can almost count on feedback. Pew reports that 89% of teens who post photos online say that people comment at least "sometimes" and 72% of teen video posters receive comments "sometimes."

Teenage years have often been typified by a longing to be heard. Social media, like facebook, not only gives teenagers an opportunity to express, but , just as importantly, it lends them responses and instant feedback.

When I stop I think about it, I come to the pathetic realization that I use Facebook primarily for feedback. I almost never send anyone else anything or write on someone else wall, or request a friend, but in the moments of extreme boredom when I log in I definitely check my notifications and my inbox. I want to know what comments or messages people have left me, I guess because, like these little Internet-obsessed teenagers, I have a juvenile craving for feedback too.

The article states that teenagers have always had a desire to be social and share and get feedback. Now teens are open to exploring new tools, such as online social networks like Facebook, to "feel connected, maintain ties, and receive feedback."

Source Citation:Jones, Ashley. "Let's give them something to talk about.(content news)." EContent 31.2 (March 2008): 10(2). General OneFile. Gale. Beaman Library - Lipscomb University. 3 Mar. 2009 .
Gale Document Number:A176868394

Dangers Overblown for Teens Using Social Media

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/06/dangers-overblown-for-teens-using-social-media155.html

In this article, Goodstein discusses how parents tend to freak out by seeing shows like NBC"S To catch a Predator, or news stories about creepers on Xanga, Myspace or Facebook or tons of similar stories, always causing the parents to panic.

Too often parents respond by, making strict rules about computer use, paranoid monitoring them, or scaring the kids into taking down photos or anything that might lead to them being stalked down. Goodstein points out that the problem with the message these parents are sending is that "it's both fear-based and divorced from reality."

While online social media does pose the threats of "cyber-bullying, hooking up, pornography, and blogrings that are pro-anorexia and bulimia", the reality is that most teens are not talking to strangers online, rather they're "just socializing with the same friends they see in person at school or met at summer camp."

The article concludes that ultimately teens are "using technology to express themselves creatively." Today's teenagers use technology to share interests or play games or stay in touch. The internet simply reflects and magnifies what teens have always done offline.

Violence in the Media

By scary movies, and violently thrilling television shows, the media is slowly (or quickly) implementing violence in our mind, so that we've lost our reasonable and rational problem-solving skills. Whenever there's a conflict, or there's anger present, revenge seems to follow right behind. And not a good kind of revenge: violence.

Why does this happen? The perpetrators of the Columbine Massacre in Colorado were not only obsessed with playing a violent video game, they were also full of hatred. They were angry, and hated just about everyone. They had a hit list with not only specific names of people they intended to kill, but also certain types of people. Somehow, killing people and then killing themselves was a release for them and had some sort of benefit. How do we know this won't happen again? We don't.

Why does the media inoculate so much violence into our minds that we have trouble separating reality from the screen? We can't face someone to resolve a conflict anymore. We either act aggressively, with the worse case scenario being violence or even worse, murder, or we act passive-aggressively, the most prevalent form being blackmail.

Our very social skills and people skills are diminshing slowly, by the media. If this isn't completely true, it at least feels like the truth. By creating a video game to re-live the Columbine Massacre and give others the chance to kill the students, the media is sending a message that that sort of behavior is okay. It's not okay. Not in any way. Yet, we're in conflict because we know certain things (like resorting to violence) are morally wrong, but we're told [by the media] at the same time that it's not wrong. No wonder we don't know what's going on with the current youth who are coming of age now!