Tag Archives: Internet

Considering how dangerous the Internet might be for children

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While the Internet has made available a wealth of information for the average person, it has always been dogged by some perceived downsides. One persistent argument is that the Internet is dangerous for children. A recent sociological study from Europe suggests that while adults might consider the Internet dangerous for children, children themselves don’t have the same perception (and here is a second article on the same study):

A sociological study on a large scale conducted in 25 countries among 25,140 European Internet users aged nine to sixteen, suggests that the dangers of the Internet for Young people are often overestimated. Funded by the European Commission and led by the London School of Economics the study also shows that parents often have an incorrect assessment of what their children see as a traumatic or unpleasant [experience]…

One of the main findings of the survey is that what would be objectionable content or a traumatic experience for adults is not necessarily for children. Thus, 14% of young Europeans say they have seen pornographic images or sexual activity on the Web, but only a third of them felt this was a painful experience.

The survey also reveals a surprising paradox: if parents tend to overestimate the trauma that objectionable content can generate, they also underestimate the kind of experience that their children may have had. Thus, 40% of parents whose children have seen images of sex think that this does not happen to them, and this figure rises to 56% for recipients of aggressive messages.

There seem to be several findings here and I’m not sure I would draw the same conclusion about the first one as the first story did (though I haven’t look at the complete study or the data):

1. Kids don’t think these are painful experiences online. Does this matter what the kids think? Just because they don’t think it is dangerous or harms doesn’t mean that it is good. Or the parents could still think that looking at pornography or experiencing aggressive behavior is a negative even if the kid shows few signs of being affected.

I think the headline here could be phrased differently to better reflect this finding: perhaps something like “Parents, children have different perceptions about Internet dangers.”

It will also be interesting to see how the children of today react to things on the Internet (or the broader media) when they themselves are adults.

[The second story adds to this: “According to an EU survey, European teenagers are barely aware of the privacy issues raised by such websites. The survey found that 50% of them do not hesitate to give out personal information on the Web, which can remain online forever and can be seen by anybody.”]

2. A decent number of parents are not aware of the experiences that their children have online. Not too surprising. It would be more helpful to know why this is the case: is there a significant percentage of parents who don’t care what their kids do online? Or are there are large percentage of kids deliberately hiding certain online activities?

[Indeed, the second story focuses more on the lack of parental knowledge. One possible explanation for the knowledge gap: “A UK-based body for protecting children online says that children find it hard to confide in their parents about their experiences online.”]

Malcolm Gladwell: “the revolution will not be tweeted”

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Malcolm Gladwell has been recognized by sociologists at being adept at combining social science and journalism. In a recent New Yorker piece, Gladwell is at it again, this time tackling the issue of whether participation in phenomena like Facebook and Twitter can lead to substantial social movements. Gladwell is skeptical:

But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.
Gladwell argues that the kind of weak ties (citing Mark Granovetter’s important article from the 1970s) that social networks are built upon are not the kind of networks that lead to substantial action.
I would be interested to hear how social movement theorists would respond to this piece. Could social media be adapted or altered in a way that could lead to substantial change?
Also, Gladwell is contributing to a larger debate: can the Internet be harnessed for social good? There is little doubt that Internet access gives people a lot of information and perhaps the opportunity to build a weak-ties network. But does it typically lead to more productive citizens or more engaged citizens? Where does WikiLeaks fit into this – is that activism or something else?

If you want to model the world, look into these online databases

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MIT’s Technology Review lists 70 online databases that one could look into in order to model our complex world.

Having used several of the social sciences databases listed here, I am impressed with several features of such databases:

1. The variety of data one can quickly find. (There is a lot of data being collected in the world today.)

2. The openness of this data to users rather than being restricted just to the people who collected the data.

3. The growing ability to do a quick analysis within the database websites.

To me, this is one of the primary functions of the Internet: making good data (information) on all sorts of subjects available to a wide cross-section of users.

Now, with all of this data out there and available, can we do complex modeling of all of social life or natural life or Earthly life? Helbing’s Earth Simulator, mentioned in this story, sounds interesting…

A reminder that information overload is not just limited to our particular era in history

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There is an incredible amount of data one can access today through a computer and high-speed Internet connection: websites, texts, statistics, videos, music, and more. While it all may seem overwhelming, a Harvard history professor reminds us that facing a glut of information is not a problem that has been faced only by people in the Internet age:

information overload was experienced long before the appearance of today’s digital gadgets. Complaints about “too many books” echo across the centuries, from when books were papyrus rolls, parchment manuscripts, or hand printed. The complaint is also common in other cultural traditions, like the Chinese, built on textual accumulation around a canon of classics…

It’s important to remember that information overload is not unique to our time, lest we fall into doomsaying. At the same time, we need to proceed carefully in the transition to electronic media, lest we lose crucial methods of working that rely on and foster thoughtful decision making. Like generations before us, we need all the tools for gathering and assessing information that we can muster—some inherited from the past, others new to the present. Many of our technologies will no doubt rapidly seem obsolete, but, we can hope, not human attention and judgment, which should continue to be the central components of thoughtful information management.

As technology changes, people and cultures have to adapt. We need citizens who are able to sift through all the available information and make wise decisions. This should be a vital part of the educational system – it is no longer enough to know how to access information but rather we need to be able to make choices about which information is worthwhile, how to interpret it, and how to put it into use.

Take, for example, the latest Wikileaks dump. The average Internet user no longer has to rely on news organizations to tell him or her how to interpret the information (though they would still like to fill that role). But simply having access to a bunch of secret material doesn’t necessarily lead to anything worthwhile.

Determining the most valuable blogs

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The world before blogs may be difficult for many Internet users to remember. This list from 24/7 Wall Street lists the 25 most valuable blogs which was based on a number of factors including pageviews (as measured by multiple sources), revenue, and operating costs.

If you were looking for some insights into what is considered valuable on the Internet, take note that the top 10 are dominated by entertainment, news, and technology sites and the two news sites, the HuffingtonPost and the DrudgeReport, dabble in both news and entertainment.

Quick Review: Burma VJ

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The 2009 film Burma VJ provides an insider perspective of the troubles in Burma/Mynamar in 2008. A few thoughts about the film:

1. The movie is told from the perspective of a small group of video journalists. With some handicams (the sort of handheld camcorders you could buy for a few hundred dollars at Best Buy), these men were able to show the conditions in the country to the world, breaking the embargo on outside media put on by the military junta.

2. A quick overview of the story: when the government doubled gas prices in 2008, people responded in protest. When the Buddhist monks joined in, the protests gathered steam. As the people were gaining attention around the world, the military junta responded by arresting and beating up and killing at least one monk. The protests died out and once again, the people were left to suffer.

2a. I remember hearing about this on the news back in 2008 but sadly, I knew nothing of what had gone on.

3. One thing I have wondered about is the power of the Internet to do good. Does the Internet actually lead to better relationships between people, more knowledgeable citizens, and a more robust civil society? I am usually skeptical. But this film suggests good can come out of even a spotty Internet connection. The world’s major news networks were utterly dependent on these videojournalists. They were also able to depict the plight of the Burmese people with limited equipment and power. Although they were ultimately not successful in overthrowing the junta, they may have been close.

4. The Buddhist monks play a prominent role in this film. While the monks are not supposed to get involved in politics, they can react in defense of the oppressed people. When they join the people’s protests, the tide seems to turn against the government. This was a reminder of the ability of those with the moral high ground to produce change in society.

This was an interesting film that exposed both the plight of the Burmese people and the effect a small group of dedicated video journalists can have in a desperate situation.

Discussing the meaning of racist comments online

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The Washington Post discusses the meaning of racist comments in Internet discussions. One conclusion: if people are still making such comments, there is still a long way to go to reducing racism.

How much income one needs to be considered rich

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Americans tend to think of themselves as middle-class, even wealthy and poor Americans who objectively are in the upper or lower ranks of income. So this question occasionally arises: how much income does one have to be earn to be considered “rich”?

The current case in the news:

Todd Henderson feels like he’s barely making ends meet. He’s a law professor at the University of Chicago. His wife’s a doctor at the school’s hospital. Their combined income exceeds $250,000. They have a nice house, a nanny, kids in private school, a retirement account and a lawn guy…

“A quick look at our family budget, which I will happily share with the White House, will show him that, like many Americans, we are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren’t,” Henderson wrote on the blog “Truth on the Market.”

While Henderson meant for his posting to encourage a debate about taxes, it turned into a public flogging, characterizing him as out of touch or arrogant. More broadly, it has provoked a discussion about what it means to be rich, particularly in an economy where many people are suffering.

Henderson’s no longer part of the conversation, though. The firestorm of online hostility compelled him to delete his essay and declare on Tuesday that he will no longer blog. He declined to comment Thursday. Even his wife is angry at him, he acknowledged in a follow-up blog post.

A few thoughts on this:

1. The Chicago Tribune article cites someone saying earning $250,000 a year is in the top 3 percent of American incomes.

2. At the same time, incomes can vary in their purchasing power in different areas. A $150,000 income living in Manhattan can lead to different things than living with that income in Atlanta.

3. Is this a microcosm of how Internet “discussion” works? It seems like a perfect storm of bad economic times plus widespread attention leads to a bad outcome for having made this argument.

4. Perhaps the real issue is whether people making $250,000 feel like they can live the lifestyle that is associated with such income levels. If they feel like they have to pinch pennies or a lot of the money is taken out in taxes, they might not “feel rich.” From those with lower incomes, this seems absurd: just think what could be done with that money. But having certain incomes leads to certain ideas about what that level of income looks like or how it is to be experienced.

UPDATE 9/24/10 3:36 PM: A piece from the Wall Street Journal fits in with my idea about the income and lifestyle not matching up. The overall idea seems to be that people who make this kind of money may not think they have to or don’t want to reign in their spending.

Losing Internet connection like going back to prehistoric days?

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This was my thought last night when the Internet was unavailable at home: this is like going back to a prehistoric era. While this is hyperbolic, it’s a reminder of how common the Internet is in our everyday lives. Choosing to not have it for a while for another worthy cause (like a vacation) is one thing; not having it when you want to us it is another thing.

My second thought: it might be nice to have a smart phone so that I would never (or rarely) have to deal with an outage.

Depression in cyber-bullying vs. in-person bullying

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Cyber-bullying has drawn a lot of recent attention from commentators, schools, and parents. A new research study in the Journal of Adolescent Health argues that in contrast to in-person bullying where both the bully and bullied are more likely to be depressed, in cyber-bullying, it is the victim who is more likely to be depressed. The research examined “7,500 students from 43 countries.”

The researchers argue this finding may be due to the unique traits of cyber-bullying:

A big reason for the depression could be that word spreads faster and more easily online: Blog posts, comments and e-mails can be written anonymously and readily copied and pasted, said researcher Ronald Iannotti, a staff scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Once made, such posts may survive indefinitely.

“Cyber-bullying goes on, it persists,” Iannotti told MyHealthNewsDaily. “So not only does it happen the first time you’ve seen it, but you know it’s still out there circulating.”

Unlike traditional face-to-face bullying, where there is a limited number of witnesses, cyber-bullying can have an audience of hundreds or thousands of online bystanders. The anonymity of the poster can add to the victim’s stress because there’s no easy way to get the person to stop, Iannotti said.

While this may explain why those who are bullied suffer more from depression, it doesn’t explain why the bullies feel less depressed when their bullying takes place online. Perhaps because they are able to remain anonymous and can’t feel any backlash or public pressure if no one knows who they are?