In his TED Talk “What will a future without secrets look like?”, Alessandro Acquisti discusses the lack of privacy that we have today due to the internet and Big Data. Acquisti points out, “When someone tells you, “People don’t care about privacy,” consider whether the game has been designed and rigged so that they cannot care about privacy”. I believe that Acquisti is making a very good point here. We almost never know what is included in the Terms & Conditions which we agree to on every internet web page. Though the site is usually telling you what they are using your information for data for, there is no way to pick and choose which parts of the Terms & Conditions you are okay with, and which go too far. Aquisti acknowledges how little this transparency does for the user, especially because the sites still request an egregious amount of information. For high school teens trying to fit in with their peers, they will mindlessly agree to anything that allows them to interact with their peers online. This poses the question of just how much personal information users will unknowingly agree to share. This is extremely concerning because when we check boxes to agree to giving up our information, there is no one to blame but ourselves. Internet sites and Big Data collectors have coerced the public into giving them everything they think they need to improve society.
Tag: response to source
I agree with Greenfield’s theory that low self esteem pushes other away on the internet because of my experiences with Facebook and Twitter. When people have low self esteem, it often shows online, where they want to continuously post to show people how their life is going. This gets annoying to other users, which leads them to unfriend or unfollow the person who posts too much. This inherently leads to the person being unfriended or unfollowed by many friends to develop an even lower self esteem, and they will be more likely to post even more because of this.
In her article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, Jean M. Twenge claims that the youngest generation is “accustomed to being wired at all times”. She believes that young people have simply formed their lives around technology and social media. Her evidence to this claim is that her toddler is comfortable swiping through an iPad, barely yet knowing how to walk. I disagree with this claim and evidence because the child was not born knowing how to use an iPad. The child was not even born owning an iPad. It was the parent who purchased the technology, provided the technology to the toddler, and taught the toddler how to use the technology. The youngest generation is so accustomed to being wired at all times because they are raised surrounding by technology at all times. Parents provide their children with technology from a young age and often buy them a smartphone by age 13. This type of technological childhood development inherently allows children to grow exceedingly comfortable using technology from a young age.
Twenge also claims that Athena, a 13-year-old girl from Houston Texas, is part of a generation which lives a life on social media. After describing the typical behavior of teenagers from her youth, Twenge briefly explains the teens of Athena’s generation. “She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said.” Twenge shows the difference between her generation and Athena’s generation to emphasize the technology dependency of Athena’s generation. What she does not discuss is the fact that Athena’s parents purchased her a smart phone at the age of 11, providing her with unlimited access to technology, and more importantly, social media. If Athena’s parents had not provided her with such exposure, she would not have grown so accustomed to this technology. Perhaps if they had encouraged her to spend time outdoors during the summer instead of spending it in her bedroom on her phone, she would not have developed a dependency for her smartphone. Children are not born with knowledge of technology. This knowledge must be learned from observing those around them. If a child grows up surrounded by a family who has a significant dependency on technology, then that child will learn from their family to depend on technology as well.
The following quotes reflect boyd’s arguments in her first chapter.
“…regardless of how they use privacy settings, teens must grapple with who can see their
profile, who actually does see it, and how those who do see it will interpret it” (32).
“The popularity of social media in recent years has produced a significant rise in
nonfiction or so-called real names identity production, but it is also important to
recognize that there continue to be environments where teens gather anonymously or don
crafted identities to create a separation between the kinds of social contexts that are
viable offline and those that can be imagined online” (41).
“Matthew and his classmate had very different ideas of how to use Facebook and who
their imagined audiences might be, but their online presence was interconnected because
of the technical affordances of Facebook. The were each affecting the other’s attempts at
self-representation, and their sharing and friending norms created unexpected conflicts.
Even when teens have a coherent sense of what they deem to be appropriate in a
particular setting, their friends and peers do not necessarily share their sense of decorum
and norms. Resolving the networked nature of social contexts is complicated” (50).
Though I was already aware of many of the topics boyd discussed in the first chapter of It’s Complicated, I found the section about association most interesting. Even if you do not invite certain people to see your social media, they may see it due to one of your friends inviting them to see their pages.
One idea I did not agree with was that the officer who displayed a photo of a teen drinking had violated the teen’s privacy. If the photo was posted online for anyone in the world to see, then that picture was not private.
In “Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie starts his story by stating that he taught himself to read with a Superman comic book at three years old, then follows with a detailed description of his setting, which was growing up on an Indian Reservation in Washington state. He describes a bit about his family, with focus on his father, who loved to read. The development of his father’s character set the scene for his own character development. He describes the conflict he had at school between himself wanting to learn and the kids around him telling him he can’t. Alexie further developed his own character by explaining the process in which he learned to be a skilled reader. He read everything available to him. Finally, he reflects on his own story by saying he is surprised he became a writer. He was surrounded by a suppressing environment but still managed to accomplish what he wanted to.
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