Death by Click
There is little doubt that for some, Social Media is a Godsend, arriving amazing and closer communication with family and friends, and launching new connections that would have possibly never happened in a standard lifetime. This by its self is clearly the asset that one should carefully foster and use to establish your presence and credibility online.
I have eliminated all Political, Pornographic, Black Market and the Entertainment industry influences that can only thrive through the manipulation of Social Media. So, we are only focused on YOU supporting two agendas; the first agenda is how you present yourself on Social Media, displaying a knowing maturity or a complete lack of self-respect. Then, the ever important second agenda; you need a job to complete your personal independent lifecycle and getting one in our current era initiates full discovery of you, easily done on-line, so employers can make the important hiring decision! Clearly dichotomous, which increasingly has hurt more young people than it has helped.
The current generation is destroying itself, at the mindless Click of an ENTER button!
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THINKING is a good thing, surrounding you with knowledge on how you approach your life takes thinking because collecting immediate and mounting mistakes are NOW, more than ever in our history, impossible to hide from, simply erase or run from in any direction. Your parents and generations before you were never known by public On-line files, emails and pictures. Is it time you put the brakes on blindly traveling at hyper speed through the youthful part of our lives in wild and dangerous abandonment to arrive a quick but thoughtless childish moment displayed in Social Media to the world, with lasting consequences, deeply effecting what you seek the most…..independence and freedom!
WHY should I think first? Well simply, because not thinking is destroying YOU!
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While there are clear examples from hundreds of thousands of failures already referenced that anyone can look up, recently here in Pleasanton is our Cody Hall with far too much Internet bragging, attention and disregard. While his home-life has been tragic, there will exist no acceptable excuse for the death of anyone at his hand, nor how his own written and published lack of caring on-line has assured his unemployability and probably fate.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE INTERNET
The DARK SIDE of life on the Internet happily destroys lives everyday for the sake of entertainment, providing a bullying outlet, or seeking street cred to overcome a lonely life, or placing yourself out there for nothing more than inappropriate and clearly life threatening attention. Runaways get used and killed- get this reality in your heads! Your provocative pictures and Blog writings will bring the pedophiles and abusers and they will hurt you. Any of these people ARE NOT your friends, family and saviors. Drugs and Caffeine Drinks will zero out your minds so you lose clear thinking and the more you publish for personal attention, the LESS attention you will receive in your life and work! This is the Reality of the Internet’s Dark Side! WAKE UP and THINK!
BECOMING A PILOT
The Internet is like having your very own very cool Jet Plane! You can travel anywhere, see anything from above or below the clouds, travel slow or fast, maneuver through congressional libraries of files filled with knowledge and place yourself on a path of credibility as a smart and capable Pilot, or you can take the seat of full responsibility with no thought or training. By the way, if you do…you will Crash…. as many published examples have already shown you.
Pilots are trained well and licensed to operate an airplane. They know the plane and all its capabilities. They admire and respect the freedom it provides. Then the detail training of all the instruments, settings, use and emergency procedures, all of which are no different in how you approach the maturity and responsibility that it takes to fly your phone or laptop into and through the Internet. You have witnessed many teens/children at risk, down to early middle school level, because no one had trained them in the adult level responsibly of flying your life and how you affect the lives of others, over all the roads and cyber streams, online. Clearly a responsibility that needs to be well understood and trained! Your future education, jobs and career are all controlled by how credible or discredited you are, or make yourself, on the Internet! THINK first!
Get in Touch with Reality
As most of us have, I too enter various stores and see posters of thousands of children and teenagers missing. If you visit the High Schools, far too much poor behavior, bullying, gossip and the most outrageous and inappropriate clothes to attend any Learning institution are in full operation. There is this wonderful backpack trick of wearing what your parents like at home, with a change of clothes in their backpack, the locker or another secret place, to transform them on the bus or at someone else’s house along the way, into nothing their parents would ever know, approve of, nor understand. While we will not discuss here that most High Schools are drug infested, more and more facial recognition security measures are being put in place to curb that epidemic. We have much to clean up, but we keep thinking it will take care of its self with little need for new rules. Ring, ring, ring!!! No it will not…we have growing issues that require advanced thinking to put in place clear and absolute deterrents.
- Drugs will get you expelled!
- Bullying and clear aggressive and violent behavior placing yourself or anyone else at risk will get you expelled.
- Behavioral Expectations are posted and explained to all parents and are expected to be complied with to avoid violations. Mounting verifiable violations to 3 occurrences within a school semester will get you expelled.
- If you are suspended, you should not be able to go to dances, graduation exercises, nothing.
We have become so fearful to say anything that we have created more children at risk. Children need consistent treatment direction and clear boundaries to operate within, during their first 18 years. This will provide them a fighting chance to grow up into adulthood and their independence.
Where is the Mentorship?
A complete generation is at-risk from a gross lack of mentorship in surviving their life and the lives of others, on the Internet. I think we should teach this in schools everywhere, as a stark reality class, like seeing horrible car accident videos before you become a licensed driver. It does make you think. The information needs to wake them up and should scare them away from all the glaring and existing examples of failure and internet death! Do you really wish your children to become like Miley Cyrus, or Lindsay Lohann, or Kanye West or the list of celebrated abusers because we allowed our children to be mentored by the third Parent, the Elephant in the room, the Internet?
Mom, Dad.. Guess what I’m 18!
If you have Children, the first 18 years are all you have to infuse in them successes in actions and behavior so that their own lives will not be terribly tragic. We all know as parents, how quickly this arrives. Divorce in creeping into the 60% mark, clear thinking has been replaced with Internet searching in hopes of finding knowledge from anyone else. Small children 7 through teens are Internet obsessive’s. Some Parents TOO by the way (remember you’re the example to them), to a point of physical and emotional loss of control state, as in any hard addiction, if their connectivity is lessened or diminished in any way, as though it was a requirement of their choosing to exist as your child.
Reality Based Education
THINKING and Reality based education is the only way to teach and mentor children away from the dark side of the Internet and its clear devastation to any children’s hopes and dreams of attaining a job, a self fulfilling career, a safe relationship or ever feel true freedom without a foolish and misguided history following you around forever!!! Think about that word alone (forever), then either attached that to creating your credibility online and maintaining it from the start, or digging out of thoughtless attention behavior in email, files and pictures all your life!
TIME SUCKED
If you have good judgment and common sense, social media can be a great tool. If not, it’s evidence against you. There’s a lot of bad advice out there about using social media. Some of it is well intentioned. Other is just plain stupid. Some of it will hurt you or certainly if obsessed with online media, you are being time sucked, finally discovering you have no time for anything. Gee, where did it all go?
IT’s ALL ABOUT YOU in the GOOD SENSE
You must get a hold of your life BECAUSE it’s precious to you and should be considered precious to some one else. You are wonderful, growing smarter everyday and will have a great job or exceptional career that YOU worked to achieve, because you were the credible expert and not the online buffoon!
Doug Linman, PhD is our Patch Blog scientist, a trained leader, X Military, Scientist and Engineer contributing stories, research and information from your interactions and interests. Please write him anything in these areas you wished discussed.
