A Texting Nation

Texting has become a big influence in many people's lives because they change their ways of speaking, writing, and how we, the people, communicate with each other. In Howard Rheingold's The Next Social Revolution, he talks about how texting first started and how big of an impact it has to our lives. First, the telephone comes out and now we have cell phones that can communicate to others by text messaging. Although Rheingold's data is out dated, his prediction about how our social world now is accurate.

In Rheingold's article, he says that he first noticed people using their telephones to "send text between tiny black and white screens." Rheingold first saw this when he visited Japan in 2001. He started to realize how people started to develop new forms communication and predicted that texting will become, within the next ten years, one of our basic ways of communicating. I know many people have read his article in today's society and might assume that Rheingold is "late on the new trends," but if you put yourself in the past where he started to realize this new way of communicating, you will see that Rheingold's prediction was accurate and he reveals how society started to change into this texting nation.

In today's society, many teenagers and adults use text messaging as a faster and better way of communication. In this video, you see many teenagers in high school discussing about how texting is a big part of their life. Many teenagers say that texting has affected their lives both negatively and positively. The negatives are because of how addicting texting is, many teenagers text in school and get in trouble. Many teens say that texting also effects their speech, meaning that when they speak to their teachers, parents, or a more professional adult, they tend to use text words that are considered non-professional. Some teenagers say that it affects them on the way they type on computers and on their papers. The positives is when teens text others, they tend to talk to alot more people. Some say that texting is better than talking on the phone because it eliminates long, awkward silences. Another positive look on how texting affects teenagers is sending messages to others about where parties are at, what's the latest trend going around, and/or where to meet up for study projects. This video relates to Rheingold's article by these teens, in the video, making Rheingold's prediction as accurate as possible. He said that in the future, people will tend to replace formal communication and that future, the one he predicted, is now.

As you can see, people are developing new ways of communication. People are tossing aside formal communication and using new a technological revolution in communicating to the world. Rheingold's data is very out dated but has interesting facts about how the texting world became to be. When someone buys a cell phone, they don't use it just for talking formally, it's now about the texting and sending picture messages. People want to communicate now without their arms getting tired from holding the phone up to their ear all the time. Since texting is now a big part of our social world, it makes it easier for people who know how to multi-tasks and makes conversations much longer. Texting is still developing new strategies and maybe in the next ten years, will evolve into something even more extraordinary.

Bullying is Not Allowed on Campus

Bullying in general, should be illegal. In all schools, some kind of bullying takes place in areas of the school that aren't being watched. In every school, at least one to two students say that they either witnessed, heard, or been the victim of bullying. My biggest concern is that it seems like every school has a bully, victim, or witness, but why are they not telling the faculty or an adult who exactly the bully is? If every school has a bully, why has not one person in the entire school confessed to who exactly is doing the bullying? Bullying should become illegal because it puts children's confidence levels low and when that happens, those kids tend to commits suicide. Bullying, in my opinion, is just another way for young kids to die, meaning that bullying is a weapon.

A type of bullying that has been talked about alot is Cyberbullying, which is bullying online. In Danah Boyd's article, she talks about how cyberbullying made a thirteen year old girl, named Megan Meier, commit suicide. The problem was that she was online talking to a guy she just met and it turns out that the guy was a fake profile but was one of her friend's mom who created that profile. In the article, the mom that made the fake profile says that, "Megan had it coming." She says this because of her child was experiencing Megan's "dark side," meaning that Megan was perhaps being mean to that mom's child. What Danah Boyd said in this article was that " The result of our child obsession is that parents are overprotective." That parent according to Boyd, is a "helicopter parent." What she's saying is that parents are overprotective of their children and tend to think that their children are the "best" and can never do any wrong. Boyd explains that "deceiving children is problematic to begin with, but tapping into their weaknesses is deadly," meaning parents should not get involved with thier children's painful problems. Instead, parents should negotiate with their painful problems responsibly. Boyd's point is that parent should stop being involved with thier children's emotional problems and weaknesses and should start negotiating with their children about how to either fix it or deal with, in other words, turn the other cheek and do a moving.

In this video, you see a parent talking about his child who committed suicide because of his cyberbullying incident. This former dad goes to schools to tell other kids his story about his son who committed suicide. In the video, you can see that they dad is hurt and wants to give his audience a message about being bullied. The dad says that some girls pretended to like him online, then copied and pasted their conversion to other instant messagers just to have "a good laugh." He believes that we should stop the bystanders, which are the people who are laughing at the victim. He wants his audiences to know that it's the bystanders that give these bullies the confidence to do the bullying. Boyd says, "such critiques are viewed as attacks and are used as weapons when parents want others to control their children their way." It seems like when parents get involved with their children's painful problems, their children tend to get more emotional on those things. This relates to Boyd's article because she talks about how parents want to be involved with their children's painful life. This parent is what Boyd calls a "helicopter parent." Although this video gives powerful messages to audiences, will those bullies in those audiences change their ways or will they continue?

Bullying should become illegal and should be put to an end. Bullying is what destroys our younger generation and puts them into stages where they do not want to be. If every school has a bully or has ever had a bully, someone should point that bully out so that they can possibly stop these problems. The parents should stay out of it but, in my opinion, the schools faculty should get involved in the bullying. Perhaps, we should stop the actual bully so that they can either go to counseling or their own parents can talk to them about why they bully people. If the bully's parents talk to them, perhaps, they will discontinue their hurtful ways, thus, stopping other parents getting involved with their children's emotional and painful problems.