Social Media Film

Parents have always had to fight to keep their children safe from the evils of society; however, with the introduction of the internet, children are more vulnerable than ever to terrible predators who want to harm them. I was personally shocked by a lot of what they showed because I have a sister who is 13 years old and I couldn’t imagine my sister saying anything like what those kids were saying. The kids in the beginning were saying that they would cry if they were a parent and saw what was on their kids pages. I was that way when I was young and on the internet, but my younger sister and her friends are very tame and juvenile in their use of social media now. That may be because of early socialization on social media sites for kids that their generation has been exposed to. There was a guy who said that his younger brother was getting an early lesson in web socialization on club penguin. My sister did the same thing and now she is using media to create videos and is considering being a director. This is one of the positive outcomes of children using the internet and social media at a young age; they can learn skills that may prove to be invaluable to them in the future.

The problem with the amount of media today that I see in children like my sister and people my own age, they have no break from media, they are texting constantly. I have friends from high school and from long ago that I can’t even go out to eat with because they will text so much that they will not even make eye contact. Also, the 14 year old taking pictures in lingerie fishing for compliments by taking her clothes off really worried me. She was really just looking for people who wouldn’t make fun of her and would tell her she was beautiful; the problem is that she felt she had to be half naked to achieve that. I couldn’t imagine being her parent and finding that out about my 14 year old child. I also couldn’t imagine being that 14 year old kid and having my father know that about me!

The kids say that parents don’t realize that they have been online since they were young and they know what to avoid on the internet, which is true. But predators are tricky, and if they want something they can find something in the picture or in the background that the kids don’t even realize. It’s a risk that is not worth taking! Predators and pedophiles are what parents and their children are mostly concerned about. There are many other new and secret threats in the internet as well like cyber bulling. This is becoming an increasingly popular way for high school students to taunt one another because you can do things to someone online that you wouldn’t do to someone in person.

Fortunately, as I was looking on my sisters Facebook today, I noticed one of her friends experimenting with being 'sexy,' but it seems they know how to protect themselves for the most part...

Even so, we have to continuously remind ourselves and children that there are dangers out there, and the internet has many of the dangers of the world in one place.