Negative Ramifications on Children Exposed to ITC Programs Research Paper

Negative Ramifications on Children Exposed to ITC Programs - Research Paper Example A new facet of the Internet is socialization for the new generation (Pogue, 2008). Social networking websites have become a recent fad and children especially are extremely fascinated by it. It’s a great way to keep in touch with all your friends (old and new), and other networking purposes, however, there are many ways in which they can have a negative effect on the social well being and safety of a person. In the old days, socializing meant face to face contact or phone calls with your friends. This restricted one to a set of close friends. Later, the SMS-ing phenomenon came. Ease of text messaging allowed one to keep in touch with more people. Social networking on the Internet beat them all. All your old friends from school, college, camp, and various acquaintances are present in one place and you can keep in touch with all of them. The thought does seem amazing; what’s better than to have an online community of people you wanted to be in touch with but never got the time or resources to? The Internet made it much simpler. Many people argue that replacing a real-life community with an online community is making our social skills and relationships suffer. This is an entirely different debate altogether. However, the ease of finding and making friends is posing another threat to people especially children. On these websites and chatting software, exchange of information has become very easy. Your Facebook page may include all sorts of information ranging from your date of birth to email address, phone number etc. While security settings help you hide this information from strangers or people you don’t know, many children make accounts without being knowledgeable enough about the security settings and concerns.