Recently one of the local newspapers covered some troubling news pertaining to local school children sharing videos on the Internet and via mobile phones of themselves and peers performing sexual acts. I for one have heard of such videos and have refused to view them but I’ve seen many Youtube videos of local children in school fighting and so on. This not only reflects badly on them later but on their schools and unfortunately even our country. With regards to the younger kids, Symantec reported that ’sex’ and ‘porn’ were among the top 5 most searched terms by children in 2009. This proves even more that Children’s curiosity can often lead them into trouble especially online. So where do you as parents draw the line? How can you protect your child(ren) without pulling the plug and still allow them the opportunity to learn and to use the Internet? I will briefly answer these questions by explaining what children do online and the dangers they face as a consequence. Also, I will offer 5 tips that you can use to keep them safe on the Internet.

From reading several blogs within social media I constantly see several themes emerging, which tells me there is some consistency within the area and that is a good thing. However, I’m not quite sure what percentage of these social media bloggers are not just regurgitating. They are saying relationships are at the heart of and the future of business online and yes, I do agree. Subscribing primarily to psychological theory and a few other relevant disciplines, I too have come to the same conclusion but I’m also compelled by my curiosity to think, what if?

Today social media evangelists are campaigning for relationship development through online tools. Their recommendations based on ‘new findings’ suggest to businesses that they should take into consideration the needs and concerns of their customers and to forget their own egotistic agenda. Like Moses they are bearers of the directive from which wayward people who comply may be guaranteed eternal life or in this case continued viability and relevance in the marketplace. However, unlike Moses, they’re bearing old news, lessons from days of yore that were lost during the ages.

The growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a increasing concern that excessive use is associated with the development of what has been termed ‘Internet addiction’, ‘Internet addiction disorder’ and ‘pathological Internet use’. However, some scepticism exists around the conceptualisation of such mainly due to the inconsistency among practitioners’ views and operational definitions for the ‘condition’ (Shaffer, 2004). Nonetheless some evidence exists within theory and research to support this idea to a degree. I will define addiction according to experts in the area and discuss the viability of ‘problem internet use’ considering such.

One of my friends (a different one from last week) who read that last post was curious about how much we will tell others about ourselves online if we were known to them as opposed to being anonymous. For instance, you giving personal information on Facebook where persons who are familiar with you make up your audience. One can appreciate that cyberspace is not one generic space as it consist of many different types of spaces, so it shouldn’t be surprising that our levels of self-disclosure vary across different online spaces. So the question posed for this week is why and in what ways is self-disclosure on Facebook different from telling others about ourselves in less ‘nonymous’ online spaces?