Hwk 10

Web surfing:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2008/03/24/facebook-generation-of-teenagers-spend-more-than-20-hours-a-week-online-86908-20361645/

Wow, it’s really unbelievable that most of our generation is spending more than 20 hours a week online on websites such as Facebook and Myspace. This is such a waste of precious time, but how will they all understand this? Many of these kids are online during early morning hours, which causes them all to have small amounts of sleep. This leads to them being tired in school, colleges, and even the jobs they are working at. I agree with the quote “children being "raised online", because this is absolutely true. Our generation has started the usage of computers at a very young age. Parents need to be concerned behalf of their teenagers since they do not know what websites they are visiting behind their backs.

“The report found 57% of children have reported having come into contact with pornography on the internet, most of it accidentally such as in the form of pop-up adverts, and a quarter had received pornographic spam (junk emails).” What is going on in this world today? Even a computer, something that sits in almost every teenager’s house is something that we should be careful of. There needs to be more parenting in what teenagers are doing on the computers these days, and companies putting up ads have to consider the fact that much of the population online is teenagers.

Cell Phone Radiation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health

It’s really hard to believe that we are harming our health using electronics such as cell phones. “As of August 2005, there were more than 2 billion users worldwide.” That’s a lot of people that own cell phones and may not be aware that they are putting themselves at risk for so many things such as thermal effects to the head. The usage of a cell phone causes the temperature of the head increase by a fraction of the degree.

“Swedish researchers from Lund University (Salford, Brun, Perrson, Eberhardt, and Malmgren) have studied the effects of microwave radiation on the rat brain. They found a leakage of albumin into the brain via a permeated blood-brain barrier.”

“Some users of mobile handsets have reported feeling several unspecific symptoms during and after its use; ranging from burning and tingling sensations in the skin of the head and extremities, fatigue, sleep disturbances, dizziness, loss of mental attention, reaction times and memory retentiveness, headaches, malaise, tachycardia (heart palpitations), to disturbances of the digestive system. Reports have noted that all of these symptoms can also be attributed to stress and that current research cannot separate the symptoms from nocebo effects.”
It’s very surprising that so many of us around the world are using a device that can do so much harm to all of us. Will our whole generation die because of all these harmful effects just because of a device that sits in our pockets at all times. Calling for us to check any messages waiting to be received. It is such a disappointment that not many of these customers know that such things are taking place. They will find out about the effects in the future; and it will be too late to solve any of the problems they face.

Racial Divisions between Facebook and Myspace:

http://www.theroot.com/views/myspace-facebook-white-flight

Even though I have noticed this throughout the years I have used Facebook and Myspace, finally I am doing some research on this topic. Other than myself, many others see Facebook to be used mostly by the White people, while Myspace is usually used by the Black people. Even though the modern world today is trying to make all racial differences disappear in thin air, it seems like it still lingers within the air we breathe.

Not only are there racial differences between social networking websites, the language among them is different as well. “The teachers’ language was: ‘It’s a highly diverse school and all of the classes are deeply integrated, and there are no problems with race.’ That was the meta narrative. When you talk to the students, they say, ‘Well, this area is called Disneyland and that’s where the white kids hang out, and that’s the Ghetto, where the black kids hang out.” It’s really surprising to see that even though we live so close to each other we are almost living like we are in different countries. The websites we visit and the way we speak all control how we are defined by others.