Singaporean youths still lack cyber awareness- this was the conclusion drawn from recent studies by the social work organisation, Fei Yue Community Services. Some extreme cases say they are unable to control how much time they spend online and that life without the internet would be meaningless.
Many teenagers have a vague idea of what copyright laws are for, but they are not clear on these points and think that a lot of their downloads off the internet are perfectly lawful, when they are actually not. A lot of these teenagers are blissfully ignorant of their own ignorance, and believe they are actually internet-savvy teenagers who know what they’re doing, when they are actually unknowingly committing internet crimes all the time. That would be bad enough, but to make matters worse, there is a not insignificant group of teenagers that are fully aware of the crimes they are committing, but yet commit them anyway.
These crimes I speak of are mostly downloading media files such as movies, music files or animated films, or anime, off the internet either through direct downloading or using peer-to-peer networks online. These teenagers happily commit these crimes for a few reasons, it does not seem like it hurts anyone, all their friends are doing it and under what they believe to be the safe anonymity of the internet, they will never be caught.
Under closer inspection, none of these reasons hold water.
As all copyright protection campaigns will tell the sometimes-deaf teenagers, downloading files illegally off the internet amounts to stealing revenue from the creators of the files and destroying their livelihood, possibly disallowing them from making any more of these files as they will only make a loss. The reason ‘all my friends are doing it’ is illogical and does not support the committing of crimes whatsoever, and is simply a convenient excuse to attempt to shift blame from the teenager. The misconception that they cannot be caught can be dispelled easily by reading the newspaper often, to read the occasional story about police and recording companies cracking down on people who made illegal downloads.
Most of these teenagers are not stupid, and subconsciously, they know what they are doing is wrong. Why do they go on doing it? As a teenager myself, I believe that the main reason for this is the teenage curse of not wishing to accept the consequences of what they do and to ignore rules or guidelines that inconvenience them if it appears they will get away with it. After all, reading about people being caught in the newspaper is just something that happened to someone else, and it seems so unlikely that it will ever happen to you.
http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20070206_002.html
Monday, 21 May 2007
Sunday, 20 May 2007
Social Ills of Youth Today
The Ministry of Education will soon be including an internet safety package of lessons in their Civics and Moral Education syllabus. A small but important step to defeating the huge problems afflicting the youths of today, ignorance of laws that apply even when online, extreme gaming addiction, basically, how to responsibly use the internet without negative consequences to themselves or others.
This problem is indeed a daunting task to tackle, as it resembles an illness in its final stages; the problem has already taken hold of much of the patient, in this case, the teenagers, and it actively resists attempts to ‘cure’ it by parents or therapists. An important question to ask is, is trying to cure this illness fighting a losing battle?
As a teenager myself, I believe I have a better understanding of what drives teenagers to use the internet excessively and fall into the trap of addiction than most adults. In accordance with my own experiences, I do not believe it to be the lack of Civics lessons in school. Honestly speaking, the lessons I had in the past
did not change my viewpoints significantly on the subjects they were touching on. It may partly be the lack of guidance by important figures in teenagers’ lives such as their parents, but that is part of what I believe to the main reason to the problem.
I believe that the Singaporean lifestyle itself is what causes the problem of teenagers getting in trouble involving the internet. Many families nowadays have both parents going to work and leaving their children to their own devices at home. Without guidance and company, the children have no choice but to turn to either the computer for their entertainment, and most definitely to internet chatting and online gaming for company. In time, they make friends or talk to old friends online and start to depend on these friends for emotional support. After all, many of these other people online are lonely teenagers like them, with whom they share similar problems and can relate to easily. Part of the problem is that a few of these other people simply pretend to have good intentions, but the lonely teenagers can never tell as they are desperate for attention and understanding.
The teenagers also grow up in a world where technology is everywhere, using technology to communicate with friends online seems so much easier online and can be done while doing other things, probably also online. Online games are packaged with such life-like graphics and enjoyable play that teenagers are easily drawn in to play the games, and interact with other people like themselves online. These fantasy worlds are often so ‘realistic’, yet so much more enjoyable to be than in the real world that the teenagers would rather play for long hours than to face the harsh reality of their homework and need to sleep.
Yet the Singaporean lifestyle cannot be changed to solve this problem, so alternatives must be found.
http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20070206_001.html
This problem is indeed a daunting task to tackle, as it resembles an illness in its final stages; the problem has already taken hold of much of the patient, in this case, the teenagers, and it actively resists attempts to ‘cure’ it by parents or therapists. An important question to ask is, is trying to cure this illness fighting a losing battle?
As a teenager myself, I believe I have a better understanding of what drives teenagers to use the internet excessively and fall into the trap of addiction than most adults. In accordance with my own experiences, I do not believe it to be the lack of Civics lessons in school. Honestly speaking, the lessons I had in the past
did not change my viewpoints significantly on the subjects they were touching on. It may partly be the lack of guidance by important figures in teenagers’ lives such as their parents, but that is part of what I believe to the main reason to the problem.
I believe that the Singaporean lifestyle itself is what causes the problem of teenagers getting in trouble involving the internet. Many families nowadays have both parents going to work and leaving their children to their own devices at home. Without guidance and company, the children have no choice but to turn to either the computer for their entertainment, and most definitely to internet chatting and online gaming for company. In time, they make friends or talk to old friends online and start to depend on these friends for emotional support. After all, many of these other people online are lonely teenagers like them, with whom they share similar problems and can relate to easily. Part of the problem is that a few of these other people simply pretend to have good intentions, but the lonely teenagers can never tell as they are desperate for attention and understanding.
The teenagers also grow up in a world where technology is everywhere, using technology to communicate with friends online seems so much easier online and can be done while doing other things, probably also online. Online games are packaged with such life-like graphics and enjoyable play that teenagers are easily drawn in to play the games, and interact with other people like themselves online. These fantasy worlds are often so ‘realistic’, yet so much more enjoyable to be than in the real world that the teenagers would rather play for long hours than to face the harsh reality of their homework and need to sleep.
Yet the Singaporean lifestyle cannot be changed to solve this problem, so alternatives must be found.
http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20070206_001.html
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