In this chapter of Mix It Up Grazian discusses how the internet provides consumers information. It seems as though that Grazian attempts to show how the internet is mostly harmful to people by giving a few grim examples of people who have been negatively affected by online activities. One of which who committed suicide after learning a boyfriend she thought was real, was simply a lie. Grazian also discusses the positive side of video games, which he claims and supports help kids develop important analytic and problem solving skills. Also he claims that MMORPG's help people train to become natural leaders in the real world from their online experiences. Do you think video games overall are helpful to people? or do you think they are detrimental? Personally it is sometimes sad to see people who are fully enveloped by a game and fail to interact successfully in the real world and lose their social life, but on the other hand these games do usually offer challenging puzzles that make people think and develop new strategies to solve these problems.
I think that video games in moderation are definitely a good way to exercise your brain and keep you sharp. The argument of people becoming aggressive after playing video games such as grand theft auto is not acknowledged in this chapter but it is a subject of hot debate. Do you think video games can really inspire violence? or do you think the people who become aggressive were that way to being with and it was bound to happen sooner or later?
Lastly on the topic of the internet begin helpful or hurtful Grazian talks about how people get less truth from online sources. This point I cannot argue, there are hundreds of thousands of websites with wrong information, but I think this should make people smarter and more careful. By now hopefully most people know that you can't always trust what is read online so it should make people search for reliable sources, or multiple sources to make sure what they found is correct. Do you think this massive amount of information in one place that is easy to access is better overall? or worse? Grazian also attempts to point out some of the negative parts of the internet which is respectable but the arguments he uses are from people who already had problems to begin with. If someone is truly addicted to gambling they will gamble, whether its online or at a casino its the nature of the person, not the technology that enabled it. Also the girl who committed suicide had issues with depression before the incident on MySpace. Do you think that these people really would have been better off without the internet? or do you think these events were bound to happen sooner or later and they just happened to occur online?
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Honestly, like with practically everything, there is a positive side and a negative side. Yes, people can become addicted to gambling outside of the cyber world, but Grazian simply points out that gamblers addictions can be created/exacerbated by the gambling system online. Also, I am unsure of what exactly you are suggesting about the girl who committed suicide...but MySpace is not inherently bad but it provided the opportunity for someone to manipulate the online community for horrible reasons. That whole incident highlights the phenomena of cyber bullying. Sure certain people are more prone/vulnerable to certain emotional and psychological problems but that does not mean that the internet is immune to exacerbating their problems. Admittedly it also does not mean that they should not use the internet because the internet cannot be solely responsible.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lolia. There are positive and negative sides to the internet. The positive is that people who previously had no social lives are able to have one through online chats and social sites like myspace. However, the negative side is that incidents like the myspace suicide can occur. It's true that these people had issues before, but the internet provided an entirely new way of exercising those issues. Grazian even says that now people with gambling addictions can just stay online and play without sleeping for days. This is possible in casinos but much less likely because of the dynamic of being in a casino rather than simply staring at your computer screen. That woman had an opportunity to bully that girl while completely creating a new identity. How else would she have had that opportunity? By mailing her letters? This is a notorious threat of the internet these days. It's not a testament to it being evil, but rather that it can powerfully serve as good or bad.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that their are 2 sides to the coin. That incident with girl that commited suicide was totally horrible, she may have had some issues with depression but the internet made it much easier for the mother of the other girl to manipulate Megan. The thing that is really sad is that the mother got away totally scott free.
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