The Deadly Consequence of the World's Greatest Innovation

As predicted in the Futurama ride at the 1964 World's Fair, technology has improved life and has become essential to the way we live. Can you imagine not being able to search the world wide web or not walk around without your cell phone? People cannot live without these innovations in today's society.

The Futurama ride at the World's Fair in Flushing, New York predicted a new universe centered around technology that would "save us."

While fair goers walked out of the Futurama ride impressed and excited for the future, they did not think about any of the downsides this new technology they learned about may have. Although technology has forever altered the way we live our lives there is a glaring, even deadly problem with it. Unfortunately we live in a dangerous world with some bad people. And ever since the invention of the internet and of personal desktop computers, there have been many acts of cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is when a person is bullied via a method of electronic communication usually seen on social media and messaging. Over the years people have become familiar with the term because the many campaigns to prevent cyberbullying from occurring. The problem is that cyberbullying simply cannot be stopped.

The internet and social media never stops. It is a 24/7 platform to post and say whatever you choose. But with the abundance of cyberbullying that goes on what may be a joke can turn into a tragedy. In 2017 suicide was the second leading cause of deaths of Americans ages 15 to 24 according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Suicide has been on the rise over the last decade, increasing 56% from 2007 to 2017. 

This chart shows the suicide rate among US youth according to the National Center for Health Statistics and the CDC.

There have been many horrible stories about youth suicide cause by cyberbullying. In 2017, Mallory Rose Grossman of Rockaway, NJ committed suicide after SnapChat videos of her walking and sitting alone with captions saying that she had no friends were screenshotted and sent through Mallory's school. Many people have began to wonder if anything can be done to prevent these horrible acts of cyberbullying from happening and what can be done so teens do not have to risk their lives.

The truth is as long as there is internet and social media cyberbullying is not going away. These innovations have become an open opportunity for people to post, say, and spread mean things about other people. Worst of all, these platforms of social media continue to evolve as we see new innovations in technology and social media constantly. As for people who are victims of cyberbullying there is only so much you can do to save these lives. You can put as many mental health professionals as you want in schools to prevent teens from taking their lives. But the fact of the matter is that cyberbullying is something that just will not go away which will keep victims thinking of taking their lives.

While the innovations of the internet and social media are things we can't live without their is a deadly downside. Social media is a place where you should be able to express positive thoughts and feelings about yourself and not have to worry about what other people say about you. Unfortunately the major downside to technology in cyberbullying has escalated to the point where lives are being taken due to the dangerous people that are in our society that feel the need to put people down. What was once a place to people to escape is now of place of terror and worry. There are only so many campagins you can run and laws you can put in place to prevent cyberbullying from occurring. But as long as the big bully that is the internet and social media are still around, there is no stopping them from doing their damage to people's lives.

Related Links:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/youth-suicide-rates-are-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s

https://www.foxnews.com/health/cyberbullying-all-american-little-girl-suicide

https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-teenage-gen-z-american-suicide-epidemic

Can Major Sporting and Concert Venues Completely Move Away From Accepting Cash?

About a year and a half ago, I was at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island watching my favorite team, the New York Islanders play. The "old barn" as the locals like to call it has been around for over 45 years and I have been going to games their since I was six. As I had done many times before, I waited online at the concession stand in between periods to buy some food, and I planned on paying with a twenty dollar bill. But when I got to the counter there was a sign that said "this is a cashless concession stand." At the time it seemed ridiculous to me that the concession stands would not take cash. But after going to other venues and seeing the same cashless concession signs I began to realize that there are many reasons why big venues are moving on from cash.

Signs like this are slowly beginning to pop up at major sporting/concert venues.

 To start, there are obvious reasons why a major venue would no longer accept cash. First, it is safer for a venue to not have cash in their drawers because stealing cash has always been somewhat of a problem. It is safer to pay with a credit card and apple pay/google pay because there is no paper money that could get lost during these contact-free transactions. Another obvious reason as we all know is the way technology has evolved. Major ticketing sites and major league sports began to bring in mobile ticketing in 2012 which allowed you to have your ticket to a game or concert on your phone. Also, with the evolution of apple pay and google pay paying for items got a whole lot easier and secure. 

Many people with an iphone have linked their credit or debit cards to their apple wallet, as shown in the picture above to pay for items at sporting events.

Tropicana Field, the home of MLB's Tampa Bay Rays were the first major league sports team to begin experimenting with cashless concession stands in 2018. It got mixed reviews but they were mostly positive once fans began to realize that a safer system was being implemented. Cashless concessions quickly spread to bigger venues in bigger cities like New York by the end of 2018.

Even though there are many valid reasons to move on from cash there is a case to keep cash around. Even though many Americans carry credit cards you cannot assume everyone has one. The Census Bereau estimated that 183 million Americans own some type of credit card. Even though that is a lot that is no where near close to every person in the United States. You also must take into consideration that not everyone even has a bank account. Aside from people in poverty, look at venue goers who are under 18. There are a lot of fans at this age at games and concerts and they aren't even old enough to own a bank account. 

Clearly going cashless is becoming a norm as it is safer and the more efficient payment option. But even though the popularity of carrying cash around is low you cannot completely eliminate cash transactions because to some it is the only payment option they have.

Related Links:

https://budgeting.thenest.com/percentage-americans-credit-cards-30856.html

https://www.tampabay.com/sports/2019/01/25/bucking-the-trend-tropicana-field-to-become-north-americas-first-cashless-venue/

Are Our Devices Really Protecting Us

When you put your cell phone back into your pocket after sending a text or an email you probably do not think about who can see your messages. After all the message is on your device that is being carried in your pocket so nobody else can see it right? Turns out this isn't right at all.

Andy Yen's TED Talk Think Your Email is Private? Think Again explains how the meaning of privacy has changed since the world has become so involved with technology. For instance, every message, call, and email are all stored by data collectors and that data never goes away and can be read by anyone who has access to that data source. Yen states that privacy just is not accessible through communicating on a device without doing some tech-savvy work to your computer.

The ones with the most power to listen to our calls and views our messages are the phone companies themselves. Christopher Soghoian's TED Talk How to Avoid Surveillance...with the Phone in Your Pocket explains how phone companies have now built surveillance systems into the core of their networks. Yes these surveillance systems are used by people to protect us. But we live in a dangerous world with some dangerous people. These systems can be wire tapped pretty easily by criminal hackers who can easily get access to your calls and messages if they can hack in properly. But a big problem with these surveillance systems built by these phone companies is that the government does not have direct access to the system. We all know one of the ways the government solves criminal cases is by going through phones. But the government can't directly listen to that phone call that plans an act of terrorism or a drug deal as those calls go through the phone company first. The big question is not really whether or not our phones keep our privacy but are privacy systems doing enough?

Surveillance is a complicated wire-tapping system used by phone companies. But in the dangerous world we live in you never know who is actually intercepting your data.

Propaganda Needs to be Noticed More by Americans (EOTO Part 1)

Used a lot in government and many other marketing activities, propaganda is when information is manipulated in a way that makes information false and this false information influences the public opinion. We have seen propaganda used very recently in politics with the upcoming Presidential election as journalists have attempted to manipulate quotes to affect presidential candidates. But propaganda is also used in commercial advertising, public relations, legal arguments, and collective bargaining. People who use propaganda use persuasive slogans and parables to shift public opinion.

Noted Use of Propaganda

Propaganda was used by the United States when they entered World War I. When the war began in 1914, the United States vowed to stay neutral and not enter the war. But with fear growing that Germany could win the war, the United States entered. But since the country thought the U.S. was going to stay neutral the country had to use propaganda posters to change the public opinion on neutrality. This was known as "fake news" as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had recently been re-elected for keeping America out of the war. Most recently, we have seen many instances of propaganda involving President Trump and how people believe that Russians hacked the voting to help him win the election. Even most recently as this week, Trump's likely opponent in the upcoming election was said to have made statements about Trump's reign as President that were claimed to be propaganda by Trump himself.

Propaganda posters like this above were used to get Americans encouraged about the Untied States going to war after the American people thought the country was staying neutral.

Impact

As you can see by the recent acts of propaganda, it has a major impact on society as it can easily change public opinion to believe in ideas that are not true. Propaganda has an impact on every generation due to the affects it has on the current Presidential situation and the term "fake news" that has been used so many times by President Trump. As for any person in America today, propaganda can affect a person by changing their beliefs on the government whether they think that some of the fake news that is being used today is real of not. To conclude, propaganda was a good thing when it came to war but it can be a bad thing, even life changing in making people believe false information about the country.

Related Links:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda

https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/overhere/more

https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news

COVID-19 Has Shut Down a Lot; But is Hasn't Shut Down Social Media

When you think of what is surging during this time of uncertainty you probably think of the surge in the numbers of cases of COVID-19 in the United States. But a positive surge during this pandemic is the surge of social networks and communication.

With little to no activities occurring during this pandemic, people have found an escape to interact with friends and have some fun through social media. Many of the social media sites that have surged that are more well-known are instagram, tik tok, and twitter. The usage of instagram stories have gone up 15% since the COVID-19 outbreak thanks to "challenges" that have been created where people put pictures up on their story and nominate their friends to take part in the challenge of finding pictures to post. Instagram users are also using instagram live to interact with followers and friends as well.

Instagram's "until tomorrow" challenge was a challenge where users put up an embarrassing photo of themselves on instagram that would only be up for followers to see for 24 hours. The photos were captioned "until tomorrow" as the embarrassing pictures were deleted the next day.

 As for tik tok, social media's new hit application, its users average 52 minutes a day browsing through creative content and making fun videos as well. The app was downloaded 2 million times between March 16th and March 22nd.

While instagram and tik tok are used for entertainment, twitter has been used differently. Over the years, twitter has become a primary resource for news. Usually, when news breaks it is first broken on twitter. So when people want the latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic whether its Donald Trump's speeches or Dr. Fauci keeping the world updated, it is first heard on twitter.

With people being on social media so much, it has also positively affected people needed to market their businesses as they have turned to social media to promote. With stores closed, advertisements for online shops have increased as it is the only form of shopping that people can do.

COVID-19 has shut down a lot of meaningful things to people like small businesses, sports, and restaurants. But people have relied on social media to keep communicating while they practice social distancing during this pandemic.

Related links:

https://www.business2community.com/social-media/how-social-networks-are-surging-and-changing-during-the-covid-19-outbreak-02297720

My Online Presence

In today's society you see people constantly online, shaping their image to people on a social media platform. That is what the world has come to these days as people have given in to the idea that their image online and on social media is important. As someone who is at the point in their life to try and make my image as professional as possible  I try my best to protect my image online.

I do have accounts on most, if not all of the major social media sites (instagram, snapchat, facebook, twitter, linkedin). On these sites I limit myself to how much I put on these accounts. I do this for many reasons like to keep my privacy and to keep my accounts looking somewhat professional if they can. I use these social media sites normally to just keep up with what is going on with family, friends, and to look at news as well. The key for me is to not post very often and to keep my accounts private. When I do post it is usually something to do with what I do professionally at school or about playing sports which is what people who visit my account will only be able to see. I do this to ensure privacy because privacy is a big reason why some people are getting exposed on social media. They give away phone numbers, emails, and sometimes even credit/debit cards. This is known as "shedding data" which is when people are gullible enough to give away personal information to online sites that store it and are subject to expose that data under certain occasions. To ensure privacy I never give out payment information on social media. I only give out my phone number and email which are two things mainly used to verify accounts.

There have been actions taken to protect a persons privacy. Every year it seems facebook is always updating their private policy because their previous one is not good enough (will it ever be?). Recently there has even been a creation called OK2SAY which is a Michigan-based student safety program that alerts the Department of Human Services and law enforcement about threats online. Even though new actions are taken to ensure privacy you should take action yourself by limiting the amount of information you release because you cannot always rely on private policies and law enforcement to keep you safe online.

Since social media has become so popular and people are on it constantly there is a concern that the amount of time a person spends on a screen can make them feel lonely. Right of the bat, when a person's only interaction with people is through online contact they are for sure going to feel lonely. Also, if you are in front of your screens so much you are for sure going to feel isolated because people are living in their own world of their computer and phone screens. There are statistics that prove social media causes loneliness among many other factors. For instance a study showed that from 1985 to 2004, the year that social media began to rise, there was a 15% increase in people who have nobody to discuss important matters with. The feeling a being alone is dangerous and could lead to many other life changing thoughts like depression and anxiety.

I have taken these factors of privacy and loneliness into account to protect myself and my own well-being and I hope other people can recognize this as well.

Related links:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/

How "The Diffusion of Innovations" Lead to SnapChat

People in today's society are all aware that there have been innovations in technology that have been transcendent to our daily lives. The innovation of new technology has come very rapidly due to a theory called Diffusion of Innovations which explains how, why and what the rate new ideas of technology spread. A great example of this theory are the four major social media sites people use today which are facebook, twitter, instagram, and snapchat which were all invented within a seven year period (2004-2011) within a seven year period (2004-2011).

Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized The Diffusion of Innovations theory in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations

The Diffusion of Innovations has four main elements that influence to spread a new idea which are the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system. The four social media platforms mentioned above have all been created right after each other due to the Diffusion of Innovation.

Take a look at SnapChat, the last one of the four social media applications mentioned above that were created within a seven year period. Before SnapChat an innovation of sharing photos had already been established. With the innovation already established that also meant that the communication channels were already in place for a new application of the innovation that is sharing photos. Clearly all of these social media sites were not invented all at the same time so it did take extra time for SnapChat to come into its own because it is different from sites like facebook and instagram. Then came the part where SnapChat needed to adapt to the social system, which was falling for the new technology that is social media but wanted something that could give a user more privacy since other sites were known for not having much privacy. What made SnapChat such a hot commodity during its launch was that the app's purpose was to create a privacy-focused messaging app where you can view a message or a picture once and then it goes away forever. This is widely considered as an innovation but it also adapts to the social system because users were able to get the privacy they were looking for on social media with the innovation of SnapChat.

Links:
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/10/social-media-history-infographic.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations