Month: March 2015

Dear Samantha Taylor,

I am writing in response to the article which outlines the perception of teens as “screen – enslaved social inadequates” by Clive Thompson. In this response I will be opposing some of the ideas given in this article. I feel strongly about this because I am a teenager myself. Therefore, I feel that this is an indirect attack on me and my peers and in this response I will be defending the rights of teenagers to socialise via the use of the internet without being stereotyped. Like you Samantha, I also do not believe that these are all representative of teens.

In your article, the idea is presented that teens cannot distinguish between the “meaningful relationships we foster in the real world” and the general relationships formed through social media. I feel that this is very wrong. In my personal experience I have both friends online and in person which I don’t think the internet strengthens or weakens their meaningfulness. I also feel that it helps to form more meaningful relationships. When you travel you would want to keep in touch with those people and it can also make distant relationships more meaningful, as you can communicate between each other which is better than to forget them.

Another point in your article is that a comedian said “he wouldn’t give his daughters mobile phones for fear they wouldn’t develop empathy”. Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing, and he is trying to say that a phone will stop that development. I believe that a simple phone does not remove the capacity to understand emotion, most teens have phones but this does not stop them from understanding how others feel. What are the benefits of not having a phone?

Scientist Susan Greenfield claims that “we could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment”  which would refer to most of teens being glued to a mobile device and/or computer screen with no understanding of what is happening in the world. Me personally,I have had a lot of experience with computers and games, but this has not stopped from researching certain event that are happening in the real world. I believe that having the computer generated world help teach people about the event that are arising in the world

The first point I want to say is that you cannot base a whole statement on one person because it will create a biased opinion. You asked a teenage girl how often you text, in my opinion I would of taken a survey of about 200 teenagers, because you’ll get an average reading of how much people text, also teens can differ drastically in what they do, because technology is getting more advanced. More and more people and starting to use them, I am aware of how much people use social media, texts and calls, but if you are able to communicate with other people without having to travelling it would be easier. that is why most businesses are starting to form online online.

Another point is that teens are still going through a stage of development and will sometimes follow a crowd of people doing a certain thing to fit in, in this case there is and growing case of teens (and adults) on social media, but an important thing is to not let one group of people affect your views on the rest of the society Some of the most successful people out there such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs started out but doing things on the internet and through that it spread like a virus with hundreds of thousands of people following them in their footstep and if you look at the amount of successful businesses that are online sometimes it could have been teens that started it up Just because it can effect a SINGLE person, that shouldn’t let you talk down to everyone else.

It was a cold December, colder than the peaks of mount everest. The nights were dark; streets frozen over by the freezing temperature, no one was to be seen within arms distance because the fog was so thick, not even light could penetrate it. I had never been to a place where no one speaks to each other. As I struggled to walk along the road, I saw a dark figure slowly start forming in front of me, it seemed like it was approaching me quickly. As I readied myself for an attack I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning my head, I tried to see what it was. I blacked out. As I started to regain consciousness my body was numb. My vision was blurred. I was restricted in place, unable to move. Then I realised I was not alone.

My surroundings were hard to picture as my hearing and vision was impaired with a sharp piercing tone ringing in my ear. I felt numb, unable to move any of my limbs, every time I tried to take a deep breathe, I felt my ribs impaling my lungs. As my vision cleared slightly I could see a little distance in front of me, only then I saw a middle aged man panting for his life; He seemed to have had been brutally beat up with his bloody face and torn shirt. Crippled on the floor, his withered face looked up at me in desperation, I couldn’t do anything but look back with no emotion. Through the sharp tone, I could hear footsteps on the solid concrete slowly becoming louder behind me, but suddenly the sound stopped. As I struggled to turn my head around to search for the source of the sound, I felt the rope which tied my hands together being pulled and loosened. About 30 seconds had gone by and my arms were free, even though I couldn’t move. I felt my body falling off the hard chair, there was nothing to cushion my fall.

Freezing temperatures shocked my nerves just enough to pick myself up , as I leaned against a wall for support I saw a half opened door a couple metres away from me, I began to stagger towards the door with the energy I had left, but I was so desperate to leave this room, I was unaware of the disappearance of the man on the floor. My struggling efforts to open the were just enough to which I could inch my body through the gap, I took a few moments to analyse what lay ahead of me. There was a long corridor with 4 closed doors on the way to the end which wasn’t visible from where I was stood. For once in this situation I felt a sign of hope as I edged closer to one of the doors. Moving faster now, the pain which once took over my body started to wither which allowed me to walk without support. Able to get to one of the doors, and tried to open it, I put my hand of the handle, but as I opened the door, I saw a figure in the corner of my eye. managing to be unseen, I leaped into the room which in the process of doing, I ripped the shirt I was wearing. Little did I know, I ended up in the same room I had previously escaped from and the door that i just closed was half opened again and footstep getting louder for each step. My chest began to get heavy and I started breathing more frequently to the point where I was on my hands and knees panting for air, I looked around to see if there was a way to escape then, I saw my self, motionless, restrained, sitting on a chair.

I was that man.