This Will Be My Last Facebook Post
9 years ago
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Contrary to New Theories-Final # Three Yo!
Parents, scientists, and social theorists have it wrong. Well, at least not right anyway.
Today we are hearing more and more about the negative effects of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have on the young sponges of society. Twitter is melting their minds down to mush, rendering them useless for higher learning or positive choices later in life. What are these new technologies? Programs developed for communication or the newest high off the street slowly pulling us all in as addicts?
Neuroscientist and psychologists have always preached to parents that some new technology is corrupting their youngsters. Provocative television, violence in movies, subliminal lyrics etc. the list goes on and on. Its true, many of these outlets youth turn to can have negative effects on them, but rarely to the degree they warn.
Case in point, in 1985 James Vance and his buddy Ray Belknap shot themselves in the face with a 12 gage shotgun. The cause? Their mothers blamed the heavy metal music they listened to. They attempted to sue Judas Priest for the damages caused. The result? They lost. What was neglected to be mentioned was their homes were intertwined with gambling and alcohol addictions and the boys were stoned drunk and hyped up on illegal drugs. A bit outdated and a drastic case, but the media they consumed was blamed for their problems.
Today, the internet takes the blunt of the blame for the problems of the youth. It is said to be causing shorter attention spans, a decline in real contact social abilities, and even rewiring the brain to that compared to an infant. A little far don’t ya think, considering the Web hasn’t even been able to sweepingly affect minds until the early to mid 1990’s.
Cell phones too, hold the responsibility for our mentally deficient youngins. Texting has replaced talking, meaning no child can now competently carry on a conversation using common English. Or, we have seen the development of a new form of short-hand, comparable to what is used in note-taking, now in simple conversations. Shortened phrases, symbols replacing words, readable to those who know the “language”. . . I would categorize that as short-hand writing.
What experts in their respected fields don’t warn the masses about are the extraordinarily positive effects the internet has on youth and adults alike. We are now easily able to contact and keep in contact with friends and relatives like no other generation could imagine. Information on any subject is now at the touch of a button, a millisecond away. Products and goods can now be found, bought, and brought to your doorstep without the hassle of lines and shortages.
The scientists do have something right, though. We are developing an on demand attitude. Good or bad, we want what we want, now. This is probably due to our advancing technologies or our evolving world. The chicken or the egg question. Whichever, cell phones now outnumber watches, lap-tops are an essential in every coffee shop, and ear buds are more fashionable than ear rings. Who’s to say this is a bad thing?
Scientists and parents are just scared of the advancing world, one dependent on technology. If the entire infrastructure of the internet collapses, cellular towers crumble, and heaven forbid TV frequencies become lost in endlessness of space, then what will we ever do? Be catapulted back into the stone-age, with no foundation to base society on is my guess. Or we could all relax, take a step back, teach our kids to reason and write, and continue through the daily grind.
Today we are hearing more and more about the negative effects of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have on the young sponges of society. Twitter is melting their minds down to mush, rendering them useless for higher learning or positive choices later in life. What are these new technologies? Programs developed for communication or the newest high off the street slowly pulling us all in as addicts?
Neuroscientist and psychologists have always preached to parents that some new technology is corrupting their youngsters. Provocative television, violence in movies, subliminal lyrics etc. the list goes on and on. Its true, many of these outlets youth turn to can have negative effects on them, but rarely to the degree they warn.
Case in point, in 1985 James Vance and his buddy Ray Belknap shot themselves in the face with a 12 gage shotgun. The cause? Their mothers blamed the heavy metal music they listened to. They attempted to sue Judas Priest for the damages caused. The result? They lost. What was neglected to be mentioned was their homes were intertwined with gambling and alcohol addictions and the boys were stoned drunk and hyped up on illegal drugs. A bit outdated and a drastic case, but the media they consumed was blamed for their problems.
Today, the internet takes the blunt of the blame for the problems of the youth. It is said to be causing shorter attention spans, a decline in real contact social abilities, and even rewiring the brain to that compared to an infant. A little far don’t ya think, considering the Web hasn’t even been able to sweepingly affect minds until the early to mid 1990’s.
Cell phones too, hold the responsibility for our mentally deficient youngins. Texting has replaced talking, meaning no child can now competently carry on a conversation using common English. Or, we have seen the development of a new form of short-hand, comparable to what is used in note-taking, now in simple conversations. Shortened phrases, symbols replacing words, readable to those who know the “language”. . . I would categorize that as short-hand writing.
What experts in their respected fields don’t warn the masses about are the extraordinarily positive effects the internet has on youth and adults alike. We are now easily able to contact and keep in contact with friends and relatives like no other generation could imagine. Information on any subject is now at the touch of a button, a millisecond away. Products and goods can now be found, bought, and brought to your doorstep without the hassle of lines and shortages.
The scientists do have something right, though. We are developing an on demand attitude. Good or bad, we want what we want, now. This is probably due to our advancing technologies or our evolving world. The chicken or the egg question. Whichever, cell phones now outnumber watches, lap-tops are an essential in every coffee shop, and ear buds are more fashionable than ear rings. Who’s to say this is a bad thing?
Scientists and parents are just scared of the advancing world, one dependent on technology. If the entire infrastructure of the internet collapses, cellular towers crumble, and heaven forbid TV frequencies become lost in endlessness of space, then what will we ever do? Be catapulted back into the stone-age, with no foundation to base society on is my guess. Or we could all relax, take a step back, teach our kids to reason and write, and continue through the daily grind.
New thoughts, no go
facebook, twitter? rotting your brain from the inside out? no way brotha, its expanding your capabilities like you never would have known. Think about it, you can chat with a friend in Argentina, buy shiz in Egypt, and watch the going-on's in Alabama. Is that a downfall? Limiting what a person becomes? I think not. For a young person or an old dogg, social networking, and the internet is actually taking what you can and want to do, and blowin that into space and beyond. It is not, like experts want to say, slowing your abilities, making you an ADHA crazy, or boiling your brain to gravy. Nada yo's, nada!
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