Alyssa’s Blog

I believe that the girls and boys who made the video of Victoria Lindsay getting beat up were not doing it for attention.  When youtube videos are watched you can usually tell if it is staged or not, but I saw a video clip of Victoria getting beat up and it didn’t look staged. 

From researching on the web, I saw a possible reason on yahoo why Victoria got jumped.  When I researched about her, I found out that she had posted “trash talk” on her myspace page, which had caused the attack of the six girls.  Another thing I learned from looking on this page was that there were two boys involved in the incident.  The two boys that were involved were the look out making sure no one would find out about the attack.

One way that our society can reasonably ensure that online communication technologies are not used to bully and harm others is to have stricter computer usage.  I think that parents in a way are responsable for their childrens actions.  What type of parent would let their child put up a video up on youtube of a girl getting jumped?  What has society come to?

Another way to help out this situation is to not let certain shows on television air.  Shows such as Jackass and other stupid and pointless shows on MTV can have an impact on what teens are doing today in the world. 

Videos causing violence on youtube should come to an end to ensure that online communication technologies are not used to bully and harm others.  Since several of videos are submitted on youtube everyday, I think it is harder to keep track of what ones are appropriate or not for the site.  Youtube should find a better way to monitor these videos or they should just shut down their site.

I think that this was a very tragic event to happen to Victoria.  Although it is said that she was “trash talking” no  one deserves to get jumped for a reason like that.

In conclusion, I think that youtube should have never let a video like this be allowed to be put up on their site and when they saw it they should have done something about it in the first place.

I don’t really have a view on the benefits of online interactions for teens out weigh danger.  I think that teens are responsible for everything they do on the computer.  If they are looking for danger, then they will get themselves into trouble.

Although I don’t have a view, I believe that parents should keep informing their children about how certain websites could be dangerous.  Websites such as Myspace and Facebook COULD be dangerous, but if teenagers use the sites responsibily then they wont have to worry about anything.

One thing I think though to prevent danger from these websites are putting certain privacy settings on your page.  In the article it mentioned how parents and educators could encourage teens to do this.  This is one way to play it safe.

There is one thing I do to remain safe online and it is not to speak to strangers.  You never know who you are communicating with in the internet world.  A 45 year old man could pretend to be a 18 year old man.  There have been so many stories about how girls meet with guys from over the internet and then end up getting raped or killed.

I think it is very important to remain safe on the internet.  Another thing I do on the internet is not give out any information about where I live or what my phone number is.  I think these steps are very important to play it safe.