Social Media the new Scape Goat? Is gaming going to get a break now?

[StBishop]

It seems that with the London riots and various other mass gatherings having negative impacts around the world people are looking for something to blame, as usual.

However increasingly people are listening to us and realising that gaming isn't going to make me waltz into a school with a chain gun and kill everyone any more than watching Silvester Stallone and Stephen Segal movies will.

It seems that people are slowly trying to shift blame toward social media, there's already a mass hysteria (at least on trash television in Australia) about cybre bullying and it's commented on constantly in my secondary education studied that teens these days (the forget that half of the class is still only 17 or 18) are bombarded by social media and advertising.

So apparently in Cleaveland it took the new Mayor vetoing it to stop a bill going through which would "criminalise the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media for assembling unruly crowds or encouraging people to commit a crime."

I have seen people on this site even talking about how social media is rotting the minds of today's youths because it's stopping them from reading, or because they are obsessed with the online world (a bit rich coming from some of the users on this forum, myself included) and feeling like they won't exist it they aren't on social media.

So what do you think?

Is this the new Rock and Roll, the new TV, the new Drugs, the new Comic Books, the new Gaming, the new Scape Goat?

Do you think it will sit along side gaming, or push gaming out of the spot light?

If you have kids, do you limit/completely ban their time on twitter/facebook/Google+?
When you have kids, will you let them use social media?
What age?

Discuss.

 

[Blemontea]

I dont have kids so I can't participate in the latter, but if anything at least now the scape goat(if it becomes the new scape goat. The waters been poison lets see if they drink.) follows some logical train of thought.

With the huge rise of cyber bullying the internet isn't much of an anonymous haven of enjoyment anymore. With video games they blamed the simulation blah blah, it didn't make much sense. Now theirs human contact and engagement involved when you blame it on social media, real people talking with real people.

 

[StBishop]

I dont have kids so I can't participate in the latter, but if anything at least now the scape goat(if it becomes the new scape goat. The waters been poison lets see if they drink.) follows some logical train of thought.

With the huge rise of cyber bullying the internet isn't much of an anonymous haven of enjoyment anymore. With video games they blamed the simulation blah blah, it didn't make much sense. Now theirs human contact and engagement involved when you blame it on social media, real people talking with real people.

I still think, with decent education and policing social media is no worse than any other fad.

The best thing about facebook, at least from the victim's perspective, if that they can report any thing that is upsetting or bullying.

The danger is (in my mind) young people not realising the repercussions of putting things online. My sister doesn't understand why it's not safe for her to put photo's of her and 4 of her friends in their bikini's (they're like 14-15) in the shower on facebook.

I've half a mind to make her goto /b/ and see what kind of people are likely to be looking for those kinds of photos but I don't want to traumatise her, and it's up to my parents to do that, not me.

The thing is, if you make kids understand that just because the person isn't right there in front of you, the things you say are still real, they might be a little nicer.
They need to understand that the mean photoshopped images that you put of their face on a cow's body and half of the grade/form/year "like"s and comments "lol u r so funny" at are still just as bad as walking right up to them and saying, "I think you are a cow/fat/ugly" or whatever it is kids say to each other these days.

I mean, sure, kids are cruel, bullying is going to happen anyway, but at least if they understand that the internet isn't a joke, it's srs bzns, maybe they won't be quite as harsh.

On top of that, kids need to start blocking each other more.

When MSN was still cool I use to block people and unblock them every other week. Why do these kids let their tormentors post shit on their "wall" or blog or what ever.

 

[DischordantMind]

Interesting topic...and not one that will be answered soon. I am of the generation that grew INTO this social media, and exist in such an environment quite comfortably: therefore my experiences have been generally positive.

For this new generation...who knows. Maybe encouragement to communicate more IRL rather than be buried in some anonymous wasteland? That way they'll learn the repurcussions of word and action.

I have long been holding off opening a Twitter account because of where it might lead. The medium isn't the problem, rather more this society which gorges itself on scandel and personality.

In other news: more of the UK series Big Brother starting again soon. God/magic/science help us all!