A couple of weeks ago social media was in a frenzy due to a video posted by 2 young white high school students. There was a trend going around that the two decided to take part in, but their version was extremely offensive and racist towards the black community. The TikTok was reposted on Twitter and then Instagram and it ended up getting back to the Colleges they were suppose to be attending this fall. The schools took away their acceptances and they are no longer allowed to attend there anymore. They faced major backlash and ultimately the 50 second video is now something that will follow them for the rest of their lives. The teenage girl who was involved published an apology and claimed that her boyfriend who was also featured in the video normalized racism on her and she wasn’t racist until meeting him. Regardless of their beliefs on African Americans and other races, it is so important to remember that anything posted media will always catch back up with you. They must now face the consequences they asked for because of such an ignorant, immature post. The sad part about this whole thing though is that this has not been the first time or probably won’t be the last time that social media is used in a negative way. Let’s do better, people 😦

https://www.distractify.com/p/stephania-freeman-racist-tiktok-expelled

Recently I was reading a book titled “The Parent App” by Lynn Schofield Clark and it told the story of family who did not permit anyone at the dinner table to have their phones out. The reason being for obvious reasons; it ruins a chance for family time. In a recent blog written by Kristen J. Carothers, she talks about the importance of not allowing phones at the dinner table and does a really good job in breaking down why it’s important for each age group. Some may think that giving their kids access to their devices during intimate moments may not cause everlasting affects on them later down in life, but research shows that it actually may. Dinner time happens once a day and maybe for a total of an hour and that’s if your family is lucky. Some families may not be able to have family dinners everyday for job reasons or sports reasons, so I think it’s very important to take advantage of the little time you and your family have together when you’re all in one place at the same time. Talk about your day, things that made you upset or happy that day, how school or work is going. The variety of things to speak about is endless.

https://www.understood.org/en/family/events-outings/family-dinners-and-dining-out/should-i-let-my-child-quietly-use-his-phone-at-the-dinner-table

The great thing about the internet is that we can have access to information in .5 seconds, so why would you not use it to your advantage? In my blog today I want to talk about googling the person you’re interested in. I think right off the bat, depending on the information received online, you’ll be able to tell if you even want to further entertain someone. On a daytime TV show called “The Real”, they talked about why you should Google your date and the importance of it. I think the main reason why it’s important is because you need to make sure it’s someone who wouldn’t be harmful and obviously even through social media and things like that, we still never 100 percent know a person, but there’s nothing wrong with taking precaution. I actually know of someone who started dating this man who went to her church. They hit it off and decided to get married. About 2 years later he was arrested again and charged for not registering a sex offender/ child molester. His wife had no idea about any of this and it left her distraught knowing that she had been with him and had him around her young family members. Now I’m not saying that once you Google them and go on a date, bring everything up that you found. I think you have to give the person time to open up about themselves and not expect them to share all of their business right away. Although the clip of the talk show is from 4 years ago, I think the subject still has great prevalence and you should not feel bad for doing things that make you feel safer.

So recently I read a chapter in a book called “The Parent App” and it discussed a story of a young girl who created a fake social media account to cyberbully someone she was no longer friends with. After reading the chapter I wanted to find more readings on occasions where fake social media accounts were made by young people for different motives. While searching, I actually found a writing on parents creating fake socials to watch their kids in the media. I didn’t know this was a popular thing because it has never happened to me or any of my friends…that they know of. Growing up and even until this day I was never heavy on social media, but for the accounts I did have, I let my mother follow me because I’m a very private person so I knew I would never post anything provocative regardless. For me, if I created a fake social media account to spy on my kid, my first worry would be that they allowed this “unknown” account to follow them in the first place. Although I think it is clever that parents are creating these pages, it’s kind of funny that kids will always be one step ahead of them. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but things such as finstas (private instagram pages that people post the real intriguing and “naughty” things that they do and only allow their closest friends follow) have been around for a long time and are probably going nowhere. The thing about finsta is that you could name it something so ridiculous and random and make your profile picture anything you want and no one would know it was you unless you told them. Majority, if not all these accounts are private and have less than 100 followers on them. This is where you post videos of you drunk or talk about the guys you’ve been speaking to. To be honest, kids these days don’t really ever post anything inappropriate on their actual pages because they have finstas or private stories on their snapchat. Me being young, I think it’s actually kind of funny though that parents feel so good about being able to snoop on their kids socials because in reality they probably won’t find too much. I think a parent would find more scoop on their child if they read their messages.

Parents Are Using Fake Social Media Accounts To Monitor Their Kids

Helicopter parents. Do we hate them for their crazy actions or love them for what they’re “trying” to do? When I use to think of helicopter parents, I always thought they were overprotective parents in the sense of wanting to keep their children out of harms way, but an article posted on CNBC stated that a helicopter parent is someone who “excessively monitors” their kids and are overly involved or controlling in a way that’s inappropriate for parents of adults. They included an example of a parent doing their kid’s laundry or speak to their child’s professor about their grades. One of my best friends from high school had a mom that would track her phone and every time she would tell her mom where she was going, she had to stay at the place and was not allowed to go anywhere else. She also had a curfew of 12am and couldn’t argue any later times. In order to get around the rules her mom put in place, she would leave her phone at the destination she told her mom she was going to be and travel elsewhere…PHONE-LESS. I have always thought about how dangerous that could be, traveling without a phone and your mom not knowing where you are, but for her, it was the only way she could have fun the way she wanted to. The good thing about this story is that nothing ever dangerous happened to my friend and she is one of the most independent people I know. So I guess what I am getting at is that I think there are levels to being a helicopter parent. In the article it shares how kids of helicopter parents do worse in school, feel emotionally drained from their studies, and wish they were more self-disciplined. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using technology to your advantage as a parent and taking the safety measures needed to keep your kids safe, but I do think every parent should give their kids room to breathe. As a kid, a part of growing up is making mistakes and its okay. The more parents have their kids in a box and do things for them and have 24 hour surveillance over them, it seems the worse it makes the kid in the long one. I am curious to know that if anyone reading this had helicopter parents and how it would/has affected your parenting style? Would you want to take it easy on your kids because you know how annoying it can be or would you want to take every safety precaution you can?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/22/study-kids-who-have-helicopter-parents-experience-burnout-in-school.html

Florida Atlantic University did a study last year on the topic of sexting. For me, I don’t think the results were shocking, but alarming. It’s said that sexting has not yet reached epidemic levels, but they have not decreased in past years. 63.9 percent of students who were asked to send a sext by their boyfriends or girlfriend complied. Approximately 14 percent of middle and high school students had received a sexually explicit image from a boyfriend or girlfriend, while 13.6 percent said they received such an image from someone who was not a current romantic partner. To think that middle schoolers are sexting blows my mind so much. In middle school you’re suppose to be innocent and not even be aware of sexual activities. I think it is also very important that we normalize saying no to people when they asks for certain things that we don’t feel comfortable sending. I feel like too many young people and maybe some adults feel like they are obligated to give their partner explicit picture because “it what people do when they’re together”, but honestly it’s not something that young people should be experimenting with. There are too many bad things that can come from it. Also, I think it’s very important to teach our kids not to ask for things like that because even if the consent was there from both sides, there could easily be a situation where the one who sent to sext claims they were forced. I know most parents have the birds and bees conversation with their children, but would you feel comfortable having a conversation about sexting and sending explicit images to others with your kids if there was never a personal reason to?

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/teen-sexting-update.php

A lot of my post have revolved around the current issue of COVID 19, but when we think about it, what else is there to really talk about. I decided to do some research to see how or if technology is playing a role in ending this virus. I came across an article that goes into what technology’s role has been so far and how it has really been useful. According to the article, the digital health community release a slew of new tools aiming to monitor the spread of the disease and facilitate better treatment. In terms of COVID-19, the rise in digital epidemiology tools, chatbot helpers, EHR guidance tools and rapid-response test kits has made an appearance. There’s so many more things that I’m sure we have no idea about and I feel fortunate to live in a country that is able to produce different technology devices that help end all this madness. Chatbot is reportedly helping healthcare providers keep up with the high volume of requests they’re seeing. Technology like this is really helping take the load off of healthcare workers and I love to see that. They have been working overtime everyday to help those in need and it is great to see that we have the technology that is able to help them.

In my parenting and technology class we have been talking a lot about a technology phenomenon. This phenomenon explains the gap between those who are able to have access to the internet and technology and those who cannot. It is called the Digital Divide. In a 2020 article it breaks down 3 ways the digital divide is divided. It talks about the economic divide, usability divide, and empowerment divide. I think it is so cool how they broke it down because it really shows the reasons why most people are in the majority, which are people who do not have access to technology. I find it pretty remarkable that there can be so many people, more than half in the world, who do not have access to information and communications the way I do. You would think for a situation like this, there would people trying to fix it, but unless you are in the majority that is suffering it probably would not cross your mind. It’s sad to think the divide is so huge, but the fact that more and more people are starting to talk about it makes me happy.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/digital-divide-the-three-stages/

I am currently 19 years old and considered to be in Generation Z. As I look back on my childhood and the childhood kids are having now it makes me so appalled that we are in the same generation, yet grew up so different. Technology has grown so much in so little time and the way I has affected us is remarkable. An article in Forbes was written less than a year ago spoke about some very surprising things. The first thing that left me shocked was that the author said generation Z actually prefers face to face interaction rather than from technology. Even though I am surprised, I low-key am not. Me being apart of this generation I can agree that I would rather be able to be in person because technology does not allow the connection I crave when interacting with someone. One thing that I enjoyed reading from this was when it said “Gen Z is looking to avoid the economic traps in which Millennials became stuck, from the massive amounts of student debt to shifting views about the need for higher education”. I love that this generation is taking action in order to avoid being in bad situations like debt. I have to admit that I was a little dissatisfied with my generation before reading this, but this article really did shed light on things I would have never thought. Technology has served a good purpose for us and I hope it continues to forever.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2019/08/31/generation-z-and-new-technologys-effect-on-culture/#546cf4d55c2a

Me personally, I have never used a dating app but I know sooo many people who have. People from all ages use dating apps like Match.com, Tinder, Bumble and etc. The reasons people use them range, but for the most part user’s end goal is to eventually meet up with their person(s) of interest. With the stay at home order going on, it led me to think about how dating apps have been affected and what are people doing instead of meeting face to face. In an article written by Cameron Costa on the CNBC website, he talks about how singles are meeting up on dating apps during the pandemic. In the article he says that video and audio dates have risen and that the users on some dating apps has increased. Even platforms that are typically used for video meetings like Zoom are being used as a way to date online. This seems to be what the world’s new normal is going to look like for a while in the dating scene. Do you think now is a good time to focus on things like your dating life? How long do you think you could do this for?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/how-singles-are-meeting-up-on-dating-apps-during-the-coronavirus.html