I have my page completely private so that potential employers (or stalkers) can't find me if they search for me in google or in the Facebook search bar. I also have my Facebook chat divided into groups of people I don't want to talk to that I keep offline all the time and then my friends who I talk to all the time and keep online. I also de-tag myself from photos I find to be unflattering or even ask my friends to take certain photos down. My profile photo will always be a photo I think represents me best whether its a photo I think is nice or a photo of something fun. I decide how I want to come across on Facebook by a way of micro managing my profile.
The future of people growing up as digital natives means that they will not have the same childhoods as us. I can't say whether they are missing out on certain things growing up that we had because thats not for me to decide. They may think that they have a better upbringing because of all the advances in technology. But older generations will always think they lived in a simpler time. Children now will communicate through the internet or over the phone. Even phone conversations have decreased. Texts are widely used now to communicate. Long gone are the days of people talking on the phone for hours. Now people choose to text all day long instead. The implication of this is that your tone in a text message could be taken up wrong by the other person whereas this wouldn't generally happen over the phone.
People no longer call to each others house unannounced. You will always call or text someone before arriving to their house to make sure they are there. When i was growing up if you had nothing to do you would just arrive at your friends doorstep to see if they anted to come out and play. The notion of the doorbell also seems to be dying out. Now people will not get out of their car to ring a doorbell they just text or ring the person to tell them they are outside eliminating the need for a doorbell. I can't decide whether it's laziness or convenience. I think it is a combination of both. Children will no longer hang out down the road, outside in the cold. They will hang out online.
I think people who engage in online deviance are people who feel bad about themselves and like to see other people suffer to make themselves feel better. They are clearly people who have nothing better to do with their lives only sit at home on a computer and make other people feel bad. Sometimes I read comments under certain blogs posts and a lot of the time they are comments from people abusing the person who wrote the blog. This is one thing i don't understand. If you don't like a blog or the person who writes it then why do these people continue to go on and read these blogs. If people just stopped going onto to these sites and giving people abuse for no reason they'd be a lot happier in themselves.
The networked public also seems to have giving rise to a new form of bullying. Online bullying is very common now. I don't think that it has made more bully's but I think that it has made the bully's that are already out there more powerful. Now if someone gets bullied in school it doesn't stop when they go home. They continue to get bullied once they are home whether it's online or over text. This tragically results in school children taking their own lives because they never get a break from the bullies. For the person being bullied the want to kill themselves can then further be fueled by pro-suicide websites where people can talk on forums and make suicide pacts and even get tips on how to kill yourself.
There is a never ending world online and nearly anything you want or need can be found online in some way, shape or form. It is clear that there are both good and bad sides to this. The sad reality is that whether you want to seek help for being bullied or whether you want to get tips on how to kill yourself, there's something out there for everyone.
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