There is a big influence of technology in our daily lives. Electronic devices, multimedia and computers are things we have to deal with on a regular basis. Especially the Internet is becoming more and more important for nearly everybody, as it is one of the newest and most forward-looking media, and surely “the” medium of the future.
Today is seems like everyone is “online,” and because of that, it has raised many arguments; reality television glorifies vanity and sexual promiscuity, the internet is perpetrated by cyber-stalkers, child predators and cyber criminals. Video games geared towards teenagers promote violence and terrorism, news outlets spread stories of violence and crimes that trigger copycat crimes. Those are believed to be the negative outcomes of today’s modern media, but where there is negative, it is argued that there is also many positives. But the main advantage we have with the internet is that we have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips.
I am neither completely for nor completely against censoring the media. In my perspective, you should be able to have a certain amount of privacy, but you still shouldn’t be able to lie about important things.
You see in the media about how people can so easily lie about their age, gender, or even their name. People tend to copy celebrities because they don’t have the time to recognize how many people are stealing their identity. But it is a really serious matter. Or, you hear about a murderer who was “inspired” to kill a classmate because he/she heard about someone who had done it in another country, and nearly got away.
These facts might mean nothing to someone because it is not happening to them, so who cares right? Wrong. Incidents such as Amanda Todd, the shooting in Connecticut, or anything that has to do with violence or death make headlines. Imagine those things happening to you or someone close to you. It not only becomes personal, but you want other people to care to, and to prevent it in the future.
The media is somewhat helping, but I believe is more damaging to our communities. Because of the media, you can get a message around the world in less than a second, which can help in cases of emergencies and a tragic event. But does a tragic event really need worldwide publicity? You hear or see about something such as a bombing, and it can put a whole nation into panic. And sure we should be afraid of incidents such as terrorism, and bombings.
But rarely just one person can do something big about it. But when the media sends a message out to to simply “be careful” it can start panic and paranoia, like someone is expecting something bad to happen.
If we censor the media and the Internet, there should be some rules so that the government cannot take away all of our privacy. There are definitely some choices that should be left up to us whether we want people to know or not, but it’s a right that we deserve.
But my problem with the Internet is what it is most use for. Can you take a guess? Out of the one million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 are sex related sites. And what most of that means? Pornography. Anyone on the Internet can gain access to it. I believe that those sites should be censored do that small children cannot accidentally stumble into them. I guess you could say, protecting a child’s innocence. Maybe you want to get yourself known to the world? That doesn’t mean that you have to exploit the most vulnerable parts of yourself on the World Wide Web.
The main advantage we have with censoring the Internet is protecting women and children, and the disadvantage would be that a small portion of our privacy is lost. But I believe that that is a small price to pay so that violence, murders and suicides will go down.
But to conclude this article; be careful what you do in the media because the whole world is watching you whether you know it or not.
-Silken Jones, special to the Arrow Lakes News