A Safe Playground for Kids?

Spending hours in front of a computer has become a phenomenon of modern children in this information age. There are many possibilities how computer and Internet can be an interesting playground for the children. From playing the computer game, doing Internet surfing, chatting with friends, watching movies at Youtube and playing online game, there are millions of possibilities that children can do using these electronic media.

Giving children access to computer and Internet can often be the easiest way for making the children happy and giving the parents to a bit of time for themselves. However, parents should remember that these media are not always the safest playground for them.

According to the Department of Health Australia, children 5-12 years old are recommended to have physical activity. Children need at least 60 minutes and up to several hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Children should not spend more than two hours a day using electronic media for entertainment, such as: computer games, Internet and TV, particularly during daylight hours. Furthermore, from the health perspective, sitting too long in positions that are not natural for the body can cause repetitive stress injury.

From social perspective, children do not meet people physically on the Internet and possibly get physically injured, however, there is currently an emerging trend of cyber bullying of children - bullying through a computer or other communication device.

Recent studies found that 8 percents of children users have received harassing computer pictures or messages and 6 percents were bullied by mobile phone. More boys were cyber bullies and more girls were cyber victims.

Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor from the University of California, Los Angeles reminded that parents could help reduce the risks by having knowledge of what their kids doing alone in their rooms.

The impacts on what children have encountered, learnt, watched, engaged on these media are also something that parents should concern about. Communication and good relationship between parents and children play a very important to tackle the changes and trends in this information age.

Has Social Media Changed YOU?

Terry in his writing “A Citizen Journalism Primer” suggested that in countries that are not democratic, or recently become democratic and where there is a history of indirect or direct state control over official media sources, there is an indication that the Internet has a great significance as an alternative source of news and information.

After the period of New Order (1998), there has been a significant rise of Internet use in Indonesia. On the top of that, there has been an explosion of independent journalism. McNair in his book “Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World” pointed out that Indonesia is moving from the age of information scarcity to the age of information abundance.

Blog has become a tool for instantly publishing thoughts and opinions, sharing information, and conducting Internet businesses. Blog has also become an important source of news along side traditional mainstream media.

Besides blog, there has also been a remarkable expansion on the use of online social networking websites, Friendster was the first social networking website that has gained popularity among Indonesians. According to Hit Search on 10th April 2008, 20% of 20 million Internet Users in Indonesia visited Friendster and 40% of them had Friendster accounts.

After Friendster, the Indonesians are moving swiftly to Facebook. Facebook considers Indonesia as the fastest growing country in Southeast Asia with 645% growth rate in 2008, outpacing the growths in China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore.

The question here is whether Indonesia is ready and steady with fast pacing of the new media development.

Learning from the recent shocking news, I learn that social media has grown into a powerful and serious tool with a tremendous potential to influence and change one’s destiny – both in positive and negative ways - in a modest country like Indonesia.