Long-Term study of safe Internet use of young children

I determined the article, Long-Term study of safe Internet use of young children, to be scholarly based on the researched data in the article, being generated from Ghent University- Department of Education, as well as information about the article stating that it was peer reviewed, academic and scholarly.

The article pulls in the research they did about kids internet usage where they later calculated the amount of unsafe usage by kids of different age groups and whether they were at home or school. It also mentions how parental and teacher control doesn't prove to change the levels of unsafe usage as the control increased. The article's study includes the risks of contact, including online and offline, risks of content, and the risks of commercial. As they discuss these different directions and a few others, they include how they processed their research as well as the results formulated from the research. As they end the article, they include a discussion and a few possibilities of directions that future research you go in as well as their conclusions of the overall article.

This article uses a plentiful amount of research to back up their claims about children and internet usage. All of the information makes good points, some of which were also stated in Born Digital.

Are kids safe when gaming online?

How safe are kids when they are playing games online by the computer or with other gaming systems? When gaming online, there are chatting functions that allow you to instant message people while there are also the capabilities to be speaking to the other people. So it really depends on whether or not the kid takes safety precautions online.

If kids don’t know about safety precautions they should take on the Internet, gaming online can be a very dangerous place for them. Some kids might have too much personal information associated with their character in the game as well as possibly making their character resemble them, as much as possible, in real life. There are many people who game online that are adults who are playing with their friends, just like the kids are but the adults know what information to not reveal to those that they do not know. If kids don’t know not to reveal personal information, give out their name or age they could be entering a dangerous situation with a stranger online.

Gaming online can be fun and safe for everyone as long as precautions are taken and personal information isn’t told to anyone which better protects the person gaming. Gaming online isn’t bad; it’s fun and can be a great way to play with friends that you don’t get to see often. The main thing that matters is that kids know how to protect themselves while gaming online.

The Beginning of a Child's Dossier

With all the advancement of technology and the active use of Facebook, people who are having kids today are beginning their child's dossier before they are born by uploading the sonogram picture to Facebook. This is how the child's digital identity begins. This makes it difficult for their child, later in life, to control the information that was put into their digital dossier, prior to them being born and their knowledge of the online world.

Once it begins with the sonogram picture, there are statuses about the unborn child and before they know it the child is born. Afterwards, depending on how active the parents are on Facebook, there is at least one picture a day and before they know it there are 80 plus pictures on just the mother's page alone with the child being a little over one month old. The main reason the parents put up all the pictures is because they want to share their new joy with everyone around them, who are asked for them to put pictures up.

Doesn't that make the viewers of the pictures partially to blame for the massive amount of information that has been added to the child's dossier, in such a short time? Besides the fact that the parents aren't the only ones adding to the dossier, all of the family and friends that encounter the child post numerous pictures as well. Within the first month of the child's life their dossier has exploded with all this information.

I have seen this numerous times with people on Facebook but that hasn't stopped me from viewing their pictures and possibly asking for other photos. But after reading the chapter on Dossiers in Born Digital, would it stop any of us from doing the same thing later on in life when we have kids?

Are you in good hands?

Many insurance companies have been taking the approach of appealing to logos and pathos of the viewers. I picked an advertisement from Allstate, one of the many that we have seen on TV at one point in our life.

One of the most memorable claims that Allstate stuck by for many years was there slogan of "You're in good hands." Because of this claim, they made they normally ended their commercials with the question, "Are you in good hands?" and this appeals to the pathos of a viewer. More specifically in this commercial they advertise up to $500 off and the small print at the bottom is talking about deductibles and deductible rewards applying to collision coverage.

Everyone wants to know that their insurance company will take care of you when they are needed. Allstate is constantly putting this out there as they advertise all the different things that they offer such as, accident forgiveness, vanishing deductible, etc. They are appealing to the logos of the viewer, showing that they have all these ways to save money while you're with their company and trying to prove that their is no other company that will take care of you like Allstate.

Allstate does what they can to get more clients though the commercials that appeal to the logos and pathos of the viewers as they show them amounts of money they can save and showing that they care about their customers.

Creators of Online Identities

We really are creators, especially for online identities, when you start to think about all the different things we are able to do online as well as the different aliases we occur from the starting point of our online identity. How were we to know that all these little things could add up one day.

We have screen names from many different instant messaging providers, which we don’t use anymore because social networks have their own chat functions. Different email addresses as the instant messaging services provides you with one since you made an account with them besides the email address that you probably had before signing up for instant messaging.

Then for those out there that are online gamers, they have screen names that they go by which are different for every online game that they are involved in as well as the gaming site storing the users information like email addresses and credit card numbers, if the gaming site isn’t free. Plus, since most of us use iTunes we have an apple account so that they can get credit card information and know where to send bills and email the receipts.

We constantly create identities that lead to more information getting out about us online which can be tracked back to us. Who would have thought that when we first started our online activity that it could escalate this far? Our creation of online identities grow every day and most of the time we probably don’t realize that we make our identities until after we realize that we game companies the information.

Identity Theft

The two posts that I found were Allstate Blog: Protect yourself from Identity Theft and Email Fraud and Internet Privacy and Safety Blog: Protecting yourself From Identity Theft. Both blogs discuss how using passwords with special characters to help prevent the possibility of identity theft.

The Allstate blog was more about identity theft occurring through email fraud. They then provided facts and tips of how to protect yourself which appeals to logos and plays on pathos as the reader then starts to worry about having their identity stolen. They want people to know the different types of emails that can result in email fraud and eventually a stolen identity.

The Internet, Privacy, and Safety blog discussed how having multiple passwords for different things such as email accounts and social networking sites. They also mention how cookies from different websites can be used to track the visitors of that site and pull a quote from Darrell West. This appeals to logos which later plays on the pathos of the reader as they start to worry about passwords and having websites track what they view on that site.

Both rhetorical messages conveyed in the posts are successful as they are informing the reader different ways that identity theft can occur though email fraud or by someone figuring out your password.

Checking In

Facebook has a feature that doesn't help with the privacy and safety of the user or any of their friends on Facebook. The check in feature allows any Facebook user to "check in" to a location which then posts on Facebook with a map to the location plus if you click on the location you can see how many miles away the location is from your location.

The other people that get tagged in the location have no way to know that someone tagged them in a location until the next they log onto Facebook. I know that some of my friends have asked me in the past if it was okay that they tagged me in certain locations because those who get tagged then have the check in location posted on their Facebook wall. This is just another way that we can see privacy and safety issues constantly arising through Facebook.

Without knowing what someone's privacy settings are can make it difficult for those who don't want to have information containing their location. I know that I'm okay with friends tagging me in certain locations such as when we are at Aggie sporting events because there are so many people there and I don't feel like I am endangering myself by letting it happen. But really when you think about it checking in somewhere can be dangerous depending on your privacy settings.

But lately I have noticed that Facebook has been trying to get users to review their privacy settings which include options about allowing friends to tag you in posts, pictures, and locations where you can choose to option to where you must okay it before the posts gets shown on your profile. This setting now gives the user more control over the information that is released about them. Checking in can still be a privacy and safety matter, it just depends about your settings and how comfortable you are with that information being out there.