Archive for the ‘Teenagers’ Category
Teens and blogs
CBSnews.com reports that a Georgetown University survey found more than half of the blogs are kept by 13-19 year-olds. But, should parents be aware their child has a blog and be required to monitor their teenager’s blog. Parents need to help educate their teens and themselves on the dangers of the Internet, especially privacy before objecting to the idea of their teenager blogging. Blogging could provide the outlet teens need and parents might enjoy their teens insight.
Another term, “spaces,” is used to describe services like MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga and MSN Spaces that provide people with free tools to create their own online communities or blogs.
Kids are using these blogs for all sorts of things, ranging from describing their homework assignments to exploring their hobbies to exposing their innermost thoughts. Some kids post photos on their blogs or put up links to their favorite music or movies.
There are a lot of positive aspects to blogging. For one thing, it helps teens develop language and communications skills, and becoming an Internet publisher can greatly enhance a teenager’s sense of self-esteem. Blogs offer young people not only a sounding board for what’s on their mind, but also feedback and validation from others, who can comment on what they write using a feedback mechanism on the blog itself.
High School Students caught Blogging!
The question is, is this right or wrong. This sort of proves my theory that the community will eventually “out” wrongdoers who blog.
Blog gets 3 students in trouble
December 8, 2005
BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter
Three male students at Taft High School — seventh- and eighth-graders in an Advanced Placement program — were disciplined Wednesday after obscene and threatening remarks were posted about Taft staff on a Web log that reportedly had a teacher in tears when discovered this week.
The issue has divided students and teachers at the Northwest Side school, with many students, even those who disagree with the nature of the remarks, defending the students’ right to make them.
“It’s none of their business. Why are they monitoring online student journals in the first place?” demanded 16-year-old junior Fabiola Segovia. “You would think teachers and staff have better things to do, like making this school a better place. This school is crappy. I think they had no right to read it, much less suspend those students.”
Internet Sexual Predators
Dateline has a great story about sexual predators on the Internet. Reporter Chris Hansen does a great job on setting up a sting operation. It was interesting to watch… here’s the online story.
Catching potential Internet sex predators
In any home where there are kids with computers, there are parents with concerns. Teenagers can spend hours chatting online, but who are they chatting with? On the other end of that instant message could be a complete stranger — or a sexual predator. It’s a dangerous side of the Internet, one that’s growing and many children are at risk. So we went undercover, filling a house with hidden cameras.
The Internet is a haven for sexual predators. I believe both teenagers and adults can become victims. No matter who you are, chatting can be a dangerous way of meeting someone. If people have more than 50+ chat friends, and they chat about sex with most all of them, I would guess, that person has an addiction.
N.J. Private School orders students NOT to blog
N.J. students ordered to take down blogs
NEWARK, N.J. — A Roman Catholic high school has ordered its students to remove personal blogs from the Internet in the name of protecting them from cyberpredators.
Students at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta appear to be heeding a directive from the principal, the Rev. Kieran McHugh, to remove personal postings about the school or themselves from Web sites like myspace.com or xanga.com, even if they were posted from the students’ home computers.
Teenagers and Technology
Interesting article from the NYTimes.com:
Parents Fret That Dialing Up Interferes With Growing Up
A report on teenagers and technology released this summer by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that teenagers’ use of computers has increased significantly. More than half of teenage Internet users go online daily, up from 42 percent in 2000, the report said; 81 percent of those users play video games, up from 52 percent.
Instant messaging has become “the digital communication backbone of teens’ daily lives,” used by 75 percent of online teenagers, according to the Pew report. “Parents are really struggling with this,” said David Walsh, the president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, a nonprofit educational organization in Minneapolis that began a program this year to help families reduce screen time and increase physical activity. “As the gadgets keep evolving, they keep consuming more and more of our kids’ time. Our kids need a balanced diet of activity, and the problem is that it’s getting out of balance. I don’t think as a society we’re dealing with it yet.”
