Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 68
Posts 51 - 60

La letra, con ‘smartphone’, entra

(The letter enters with smartphone (pun with "la letra con sangre entra"))

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 27.10.2014
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | grammar, research/study, social media, spelling, texting, threat, youth
Summary | Spelling and grammar are having a hard time in today's society; there seems to be too much lenience with regards to writing rules, which may be due to an incorrect use of new technologies. People should know when it is appropriate to use a specific register. It is okay to write a text message with abbreviations as long as users are able to change register and adapt their writing in an exam for example. A professor in Valladolid claims that handwriting as opposed to digital writing can be the solution to spelling and grammar mistakes. Social media and the way we write on those networks have a major impact on our writing skills. A study showed that the mistakes young people make in their writing assignments come from our habit to constantly write quickly and be spontaneous on social media. Those mistakes are mostly due to a lack of attention. The study also showed a positive aspect: with social media, we write more.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of four young people using their smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone

How good is your grammar? Take the quiz

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Newspaper | The Independent
Date | 16.2.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | childhood, grammar, language threat, research/study, school, texting, threat, youth
Summary | According to a study, texting can have a bad impact on young people's use of grammar. The results show that the more people text, the lower their score on the test was. There is also a correlation between the use of adaptations (e.g. gr8 for great) and a lower score. If parents text their kids with a lot of adaptations, the kids will probably imitate their parents.
Image Description | Photograph of a page of a dictionary where the word "grammar" is in sharp focus.
Image Tags | dictionary

How Do We Get Young People to Stop Sexting?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.11.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | school, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | The whole society is responsible for the next generation's sex education: schools, parents, media, religious communities, and so on. Because all these groups differ on the appropriate content of such sex education. Warnings about the dangers of sexting should be included but even adults sext irresponsibly so parents cannot be trusted with the responsibility to teach the next generation on how to handle themselves on new media. Sexting is dangerous to ruining one's reputation and one's "digital brand".
Image Description | N/A

Dumbing Down the Phone for Children

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 12.12.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | childhood, smartphone, threat, youth
Summary | Parents all face the problem of their children wishing for smartphones for christmas at some point. Often, parents feel that point arrives too early. There are some possibilities to ease children into new media use, by getting a "dumbphone" for instance which has no internet access. Even smartphones have settings for parental control where curfews can be set when the child/teenager is supposed to sleep and not be able to use the smartphone or to block social media or in-app purchases. It is irresponsible to give young children/teenagers full use of a smartphone but one should give them access to the digital sphere in steps, just as one does not start teaching a child how to cook by handing it all the sharp knives.
Image Description | Photograph of a family in front of christmas tree gathered around a smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

Napthine government to introduce sexting laws

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Newspaper | The Age
Date | 21.8.2014
Language | English
Country | Australia
Topic Tags | law, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | The Australian Naphtine government wants to loosen child pornography prosecution laws to exclude non-exploitative consensual sexting among minors. The reason for this change is that young people’s careers can suffer because they got placed on the sex offenders register for sexting while underage. Minors who distribute intimate imagery of a peer will still be prosecuted but not land on the child pornography offenders list for life.
Image Description | Photograph of two face less female bodies using a smartphone. Only torso and hands are visible.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone

Cops warn of increase in sexting; explicit photos could ruin someone’s life

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Newspaper | Windsor Star
Date | 17.9.2014
Language | English
Country | Canada
Topic Tags | sexting, threat, youth
Summary | More and more cases of teenagers' sexts becoming public are reported. These youths feel less vulnerable showing their body through an image than in person but really they are making themselves much more vulnerable to abuse because they share a record of their intimate behavior. Many male teenagers collect girls' sexts as trophies that they can whip out any time and share with their peers. Oftentimes, vindictive ex-partners publish nude images online after the breakup. Because of the large reach of the internet victims of sexting abuse can become infamous over night which ruins their reputation, makes them guilty of producing or distributing child pornography, and has even lead one 13 year old girl to commit suicide. Parents are urged to have frank discussions about this issue with their children.
Image Description | Video and portrait of the interviewee from the sexual assault crisis center.
Image Tags | female(s)

In messaging apps for teens, talk of dangers and dollars

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 14.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | social media, threat, youth
Summary | Teenagers are moving away from public social media and towards private communication channels where they are unsupervised by their parents. Parents should however look into technologies to monitor their children's online activity - even on private media such as WhatsApp or Kik. Because Kik has reported a 40% increase in teenage users, businesses are eager to advertise on this platform. Online advertising is however moving away from banner ads to chatbots which approach the prospective customers in an informal conversational manner. For now, chatbots are only for advertising but they are planned to enable users to actually shop within a messaging app.
Image Description | Video about teenage deaths/pedophile crimes faciliated on Kik and a screenshot of a chat with the Kik chatbot.
Image Tags | text

Abus d'écrans, responsabilité de parents

(Screen abuse, parents' responsibility )

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 31.1.2015
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | addiction, childhood, smartphone, technology-free, threat, youth
Summary | Parents keep complaining about the fact that their children are stuck to their digital devices. More and more households in Switzerland own several digital devices ("screens"), which has consequences on family relations. Indeed, screens hinder natural communication and create problems. Parents seem lost and don't know what to do. Some parents have specific rules: no phone during dinner, or no phone before going to school in the morning, or no more than 30 minutes a day. A psychiatrist claims that the main rule should be to always privilege people physically present around us, especially children.
Image Description | N/A

Des écoles banissent le portable des préaux

(Schools prohibit cell phones on their playgrounds)

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Newspaper | 20 minutes
Date | 12.9.2016
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | school, smartphone, technology-free, threat, youth
Summary | Several schools in Switzerland have prohibited the use of smartphones during recess. Students do not learn as well as before, and interactions in the classrooms are not as good. Other people don't agree with this new rule. Schools need to accept the fact that everyone owns a smartphone nowadays. People communicate, which is a huge advantage of smartphones. Also, students should be able to be "free" during recess. They might want to be alone, and this is okay. Finally, a school principal thinks that prohibiting smartphones during recess is better for students; smartphones hinder the development of intercommunication.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of young male teenagers smiling and looking at their smartphones.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Schreiben statt streicheln: Die neue kalte Liebesordnung

(Writing instead of stroking: The new cold order of love)

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Newspaper | Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Date | 20.6.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | Facebook, smartphone, threat, WhatsApp, youth
Summary | Youth nowadays do not get to know their love interests face-to-face but rather through digital channels. A typical digital encounter would be a Facebook friend request, message exchanges and possibly the exchange of seductive images. Now intimacy means something different; people open up to each other in letter form rather than with actual physical contact. Cultural pessimists fear that while it is convenient that all of our interactions can be done online, this convenience may turn into a huge problem because people could virtually stay at home all the time and become lonely.
Image Description | Photograph in back and white of a couple (male and female), sleeping entwined.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

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