Can Cyber Bullying Be Blamed on the Parents?

As I was browsing CNN.com today a very sad article caught my attention about a 12 year old girl committing suicide because she had been cyber bullied by two other girls around her age. After the girl committed suicide one of bullies supposedly posted on her Facebook account, "Yes IK I bullied REBECCA nd she killed herself but IDGAF." Although the dad of the girl said that he thought his daughter was hacked, this incident still does raise the question: Where were the parents? 

The author of this article believes that the parents of the bullies who caused a girl to end her life should be criminally charged for being ignorant about what their child is doing on the internet. Although this story is tragic, I do not think it would be fair for the parents to be criminally charged. Even if the parents are not very involved with their children's social media accounts, its not like they were the ones telling their children to go after this girl. It should be the actual bully getting criminal charges, not the parents.

Neither my mom or dad has my Facebook or Twitter password and I do not ever think they will but if I were to ever to do something bad on the internet it shouldn't be their fault that I never gave them my passwords. I think cyber bullying between teens can be stopped more easily through social work in schools or counseling. Not blaming parents for being out of the know. 

Comments are very much appreciated!

The Rainbow Loom: A Toy For Everyone

The other day as I was hanging out with my 7 year old sister, I looked down at her arm and noticed about 3 rainbow bracelets made out of rubber bands. I asked her what they were and she immediately exclaimed that they were made from her "rainbow loom." She looked up at me and said, "Everyone has one! Even the boys!" I was very intrigued by her comment and then when I saw the article on Time.com about the infamous "Rainbow Loom" it immediately caught my attention. The full article can be found here but the article was introducing this new phenomenon and how it was "defying the stereotype" of toys that boys play with.

When I was 7 years old I remember all of the boys playing with legos, cars. swords etc. I (as a girl) was very content playing with my Barbies and crafting but none of the boys wanted to come near any of my toys which was understandable. But, the rainbow loom is a toy for both genders which I find very interesting. Personally, I would guess that boys wouldn't like this new toy because it's technically jewelry making and boys learn at a very young age that jewelry is more of a girl thing. But, the rainbow loom proves that the gap between boys and girls toys may be becoming smaller.

Has Slavery Really Dissapeared or Just Evolved?

Slavery has been on my mind a lot lately especially because a lot of History classes have been talking about it. While skimming through CNN one article titled "We still need to end slavery" really caught my eye. I had always thought that slavery ended hundreds of years ago but after reading this article my mind has really changed. The full article can be read here but the basic point of the article is that although slavery was "abolished" years and years ago, modern slavery here in the U.S. is happening. Slavery today may not be as brutal as it was in the 1800's but it is still a lot like the slavery hundreds of years ago we have all been learning about since grade school. 

The article says, "Modern slavery is the man who was promised a job on a farm to earn enough money to pay for his parents' medical care, then forced to work long hours, intimidated with violence, and made to live in deplorable conditions in a cramped room with his co-workers." To me, this quote sounds a lot like the stories we hear about the slaves and their conditions on the plantations. The article also gives another example and says, " Modern slavery is the 15-year-old girl who was romanced and recruited by a pimp, then raped, beaten, and sold online into the commercial sex trade." Although human trafficing is illegal, this article and the picture above makes it clear that is still going on because it is so profitable. In 2005, the U.N estimated the human trafficing industry to be a 32 billion a year industry but many professionals in the anti-traffcing field believe that number is outdated and too low. 

My overall impression of this article is disbelief. I had no idea the act of "modern slavery" was going on in the U.S. It may not be very obvious or a well known fact because it may not be as brutal but I think that it should definetely be stopped.

America's Obsession With the Wealthy

There is a popular tv show on the Bravo Network called "Real Housewives." Bravo has normally been known as the channel of Top Chef or Project Runway but after their first Real Housewives show called "The Real Housewives of the Orange County" they realized how successful it was and began to make more spin offs of different housewives from different cities like "The Real Housewives of NYC." The basic idea of these reality shows is to show the lifestyle of the richest housewives in the US. There isn't much substance to the show. Its basically just pictures well groomed women in their mansions or shopping and getting into other cat fights with their so called "friends."

Although the show does not have much substance, there are about 2 million viewers

Social Networking Taken to the Next Level

As I was looking on CNN today, I noticed a recent post about the use of "Twitter" and clicked on it because I myself do have a Twitter account and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. According to this article, the terrorist group, Alshabaab, shot and killed over 61 people in the Westgate Mall in Kenya on Saturday. A few hours into the attack members of Alshabaab were tweeting updates of the attack while it was going on. One of the tweets looked like this:  "The Mujahideen ('holy warriors') entered Westgate mall today at around noon and they are still inside the mall, fighting the Kenyan kuffar ('infidels') inside their own turf."

Another tweet done after the attack was this:  "#Westgate: a 14-hour standoff relayed in 1400 rounds of bullets and 140 characters of vengeance and still ongoing. Good morning Kenya!" Although Twitter employees have been disabling this terrorist group's accounts for a couple years, Alshabaab keeps making new accounts and tweeting more. 

Journalists have been saying that these types of terrorist attacks are like theater. The terrorists strive on viewers and attention. During 9/11 it is said that Osama Bin Laden himself listened to the live BBC coverage on the radio. Although the terrorist are not controlling the media yet, people are beginning to worry that terrorists are going to start streaming attacks live on websites like Youtube or Facebook and really start to use attacks as a form of theater or entertainment to get views and attention. This really scares me because it shows how involved technology is in people's lives today and how ideas can be spread so quickly. I think it would be really hard to limit or take away from the technology we already have but if terrorists start taking it to the next level, I think the government should be censoring technology a little bit more carefully. Thoughts and comments are appreciated!