The debate against social media

Beth, Rob and Ashton

Social Media and Psychological Issues

• Social media can have a damaging psychological effect on those who chose to use it.

• The use of social networking sites is correlated with personality and brain disorders, such as the ability to have in- person conversations, a need for instant gratification, ADHD, a self centered personality and other addictive behaviors.

• Pathological internet use is associated with feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety and general distress.

• The 2013 ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is evaluating ‘Internet Addiction Disorder’ for inclusion into the list of psychological disorders.

• ‘10% of people younger than 25 years old respond to social media and text messages during sex.’

Social Media and Employment: Legal, but Ethical?

37% of employers are checking out prospective employees on social media before they make a final decision.Pre screening on social media sites continues to hurt prospective employee’s chances of getting the job, and a third of hiring managers said that social media snooping led to the employee not getting the job.Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Google are not necessarily valid nor is there any way to ascertain the true identity of the person responsible for the information found. Unlike the interview process, there is no personal connection when sitting through information found on the internet and therefore is a greater likelihood for the information to ascertain the true identity of the person responsible for information found be taken out of context or misused. In many cases, information used to determine the suitability of a prospective employee had little or no bearing on their ability to complete the work. As information on the internet is generally considered public, permission for these searches is not required. As a result, unverified information can sway a future employers decision without any input from the employee in question.

Social Networking Sites Facilitate Cyber Bullying

• 49.5% of students reported being the victims of bullying online and 33.7% reported committing bullying behavior online.

• 800,000 minors were harassed or cyber bullied on Facebook according to a June 2012 Consumer Reports survey.

• Middle school children who were victims of cyber bullying were almost twice as likely to attempt suicide.

• It doesn’t only apply to children and teenagers, adults too are also susceptible to cyber bullying, whether it be social, familial, or workplace aggression being displayed on social media sites

The Severity Of Cyber Bullying:Story of Amanda Todd

Amanda’s ordeal began at the age of 12 when she was fooling around with friends and lifted up her top for someone on the other end of the webcam.The person was not a boy of her age though but a suspected pedophile from across the border, who went on to terrorize her right up until her death.“The internet stalker she flashed kept stalking her’ said Ms Todd, ‘Every time she moved schools he would go undercover and become a Facebook friend’‘He went online to the kids (that went to the new school) and told them that he was going to be a new student – that he was starting school the following week and that he wanted some new friends and could they friend him on Facebook.’He eventually gathered names and then sent Amanda’s video to her new school. The video not only went to the pupils but the parents and also the teachers.She was bullied and harassed by the pupils being taunted with names and Amanda soon became withdrawn and desperate to avoid lessons.Police were never able to track the stalker down but did trace him back to America and despite the investigations, her stalker persisted in harassing her demanding she gave him another show, threatening to circulate her pictures if she refused.She refused and he carried out his threat and her pain was amplified by her classmates who its claimed shared the photos on their mobile phones.

Harrowing images from her YouTube video where she expressed her struggle and depression

The Spreading Of False Information

Social media enables the spread of unreliable and false information. 49.1% of people have heard false news via social media. On Sep. 5, 2012 false rumors of fires, shootouts, and caravans of gunmen in the Mexico City suburb spread via Twitter and Facebook caused panic, flooded the local police department with over 3,000 phone calls, and temporarily closed school.

Shashank Tripathi, tweeting as @ComfortablySmug, spread false information in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy by posting on Twitter that the New York Stock Exchange was flooding and that the power company would cut off electricity to all of Manhattan; the bogus information was picked up by national news outlets including CNN and the Weather Channel

Increased Exposure To ‘Internet Trolls’

An internet ‘troll’ is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous or off topic messages in an online community such as a forum, chat room, or blog with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response, or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

One of the most recent ‘trolls’ to take place and cause huge uproar was the ‘Cut for Beiber’ trend on Twitter. The cut for Beiber trend was made by a group of internet trolls from 4chan, one of the largest forums on the internet and known for conjuring up trolling incidents. A group from 4chan made dummy accounts and got the hashtag trending, posting images of self harm with captions of ‘we’ll stop cutting when you stop smoking!’. Belibers soon saw the trend and it became nationwide within hours. Swarms of teenage girls took to Twitter to tweet with their pictures of their mutilated wrists and pleas for him to stop smoking the drugs.

This is one of the major examples of how extreme trolling can be and how easily people can be sucked in by it. Trolling can be more minor than this, but it still causes disruption to the use of social media and it Is becoming more of an issue with more people become victims of the trolls. It goes to show that some people are only out there to cause an inconvenience to others and it seems the easiest way to target these people is through social media.

I think it showed me that a lot of our understanding of the world is formed by the filter in which we view events...and our view of the same events are entirely a result of the filter through which we consume information.

Ting-Ting Cheng

Copyright IssuesAfter suffering a loud user backlash on Tuesday, the popular photo-sharing application Instagram backtracked from new policy changes it announced a day earlier that seemed to give it and parent company Facebook the latitude to repurpose user photos and information for advertising purposes.

“To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos,” wrote Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom in a conciliatory blog post published late Tuesday, later adding: “The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.”But the new changes Instagram introduced for its terms of service and privacy policy — which are still set to go into effect January 16, 2013 — did seem to indicate that Instagram could have taken user photos and content for advertising purposes, according to copyright law experts who spoke to TPM.

In the new terms proposed Monday, “Instagram claims it can sell to other parties the right to use your content (including photos) and not provide you with any compensation,” wrote Greg Lastowka, an intellectual property law professor at Rutgers, in an email to TPM.http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/instagram-users-worried-copyright-experts.php