The Negative Effects of Social Networking Services

Sakura Ishadoh, OCJC

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LINE, and many other Social Networking Services exist nowadays in almost every nook and cranny of our lives. These services are very useful tools to help us contact many different people from all over the world. They can show us about what our friends are up to now, the fashion trends they follow, the shocking news about insane celebrities, and even tell us about people we don't know. Even though we have come to believe that Social Networking Services have made modern life more conducive for us to live and have made our lives more interesting, we must understand that there are some serious negative effects that come along with our uses of these powerful tools. 

One of the negative effects seen in the world of Social Networking Services, is the lack of important information we see. According to Yuichi Sasaki, the professor of the Communication Department in Tokyo Keizai University, when a person clicks on a content or an advertisement, the computer keeps track of that data, which makes web pages show contents that the user has interest in. Everything we see is what we like, which makes it hard for us to get out of that pleasant pit. People end up in a “filter bubble,” notes Sakitani, where you only see information that is comfortable for you. The search engines and social media algorithms make users wrapped in bubbles made from their own cultural and ideological filters and gets them isolated from opinions which differs from their own. In an example made by Yuichi Sasaki, during an election, the Republican supporter will retweet another supporter’s information, then the same thing happens to the Democrat supporter. This ends up with the Republicans only seeing the Republican posts, and the Democrat’s only seeing the Democratic posts. This is what happens behind polarization. 

Another point that citizens across the world should be much more aware of is the practice of leaking our personal information to government agencies and to other huge corporations wanting to sell us their products and points of view. In “Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model Foretells a Weaponized Facebook,” Broudy and Klaehn remind us that “the personal is now public” with regards to what we use and say on Facebook. No matter what our privacy settings say, our words are open to sale to these agencies and organizations. The authors essentially want us that the world’s leading Social Networking Service is using our personal information as a commodity and, therefore, us as products. Who wants to be sold like a pet? 

Other negative effects happening because of the Social Networking Services is Cyberbullying and Cyberharassment. “59 percent of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online,” says Monica Anderson a researcher from the Pew Research Center. Research shows that 42 percent of teens have been called offensive names online and on their phones, 32 percent of teens say that false rumors were spread on the internet, 21 percent say that their parents were continuously questioning them about where they are, what  hey are doing, and who they are with. 16 percent say that they have been blackmailed to physically be abused. In the same article, Anderson reports that ¼ of the teens say that people sent them explicit images they didn’t ask for, and 7 percent say that “someone shared explicit images of them without their permission.” Also, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology announced that in the research made by the ministry showed that the number of students in Japan who has experienced cyberbullying has increased from 9,187 students to 10,783 students, an increase of 1596 people. Social Networking Services is also affecting the children. 

The Cyber Crime Prevention Project of the National Police Agency released materials that compiled the current situation and countermeasures of victimized children caused by the Social Networking Services. Along with the increase in ownership and use of smartphones among young people, the number of victimized children has also increased, and it became clear that in the year 2017  record has been updated again. The data have shown that 38.7 percent of the crimes were related to the violation of the Youth Protection Act, 31.4 percent related to child porn, 24.7 percent related with child prostitution, 3.4 percent related with essential crime, and 1.8 percent with the Child Welfare Act. One of the main reasons why this is happening is because of the lack of education related to Social Networking Services and the Internet to the younger children. In the research made by the Cyber Crime Prevention Project of the National Police Agency, showed that 40.8 percent of the children do not remember being informed about the dangers behind the usefulness of the Social Networking Services, and 6.8 percent of the children did not get the education at all. 

The last but not the least is the negative effects made to the mental health of  a person. In a study published in the Computers and Human Behaviour, it says that people who use seven or more Social Networking Services have high levels of anxiety symptoms three times more than the people using zero to two Social Networking Services. According to Brown, the levels of anxiety shown in this research refer to feelings of restlessness and worry, and sleep/concentration problems. It also has an effect on the self-esteem of people. Since we can see what other people are posting, we start to compare our lives to it, but you are not necessarily seeing how that person or a thing you’re looking at truly looks like but might be seeing something “made-up with its filters and lighting and clever angles. In a survey of 1,500 people made by a disability charity Scope, 1/2 of the people aged 18 to 34 who used Social Networking Services feels unattractive. Much other research showed a similar conclusion such as the research made by the Penn State University, people who view other people’s selfies have low self-esteem because they tend to compare themselves to photos of other people who look satisfied. Research from the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and the University of Iowa also found that women compare themselves negatively to selfies of other women, and gets a negative feeling about it. 

Being born in a generation where Social Networking Services takes a large part in our lives, I personally feel the dangers close to me. I have a Facebook, Twitter, and an Instagram account, and I do post at least once a day on one of these Social Networking Services. I went from Okinawa to Portland to study abroad, but I never really told anyone where I would be. I only posted that I am in one of the states. One day I posted about a “Bee in a club Day” hosted by the student council there and wrote about how I am helping with a club right now. I took a picture of a cupcake with a bee-shaped gummy on it and posted it on Instagram. After a while, I got a comment saying, “You are in Portland Community College right? That's the only college that has a Bee related club day today.” I was terrified. I wasn't hiding it or anything but still, it was very intimidating. One picture of a cupcake is enough for people to find out where you are from a place far away. I’ve always thought that Social Networking Services is not a great deal, but from this situation, I felt the alarm ringing in my head. I deleted that picture and am very careful now about what I post.  

Social Networking Services has made our lives much easier by being able to contact people in an instant instead of waiting for days for a letter to come and arrive, and to know what is happening in the current world , but there is always a negative side effects such as the lack of information, information leakage, cyber-related bullying, effects to children, and the effecting of mental health. As users, we have to always be aware of those effects and be very careful when we post in them. 

Stay Away From Fast Food

Takako Uchiyama, OCU

These days, there are many kinds of disease infecting human beings. Lifestyle-related illnesses have especially become the center of public attention because these can happen for anyone, and yet people can prevent these serious illnesses by readjusting their lifestyle, such as their eating habits or the quantity of what the consume. If people usually have healthy diet, they can easily prevent these illnesses. However, it is difficult for people of contemporary society because so many people lead such busy lives, so they don’t have enough time to slow down and enjoy an actual meal every day. Therefore, many people turn to fast food, because it’s so easy to acquire, so fast and so cheap.

Despite this, fast foods are not healthful foods for us. Many people already know that fast food is high in saturated fat and in empty calories. Although these are not the only reasons to avoid fast foods, there are surely various other reasons. In this article, I discuss three other reasons why people should stop give up fast foods. The primary problem is what people can once when they abstain from fast food. I will also suggest an alternative way of eating.

First, fast foods can make you overweight, not only because they are too high in calories, but they contain too much sugar, salt, and oil. Recent research shows that fast foods kill important gut bacteria, which helps the body remain slim and trim. According to genetic epidemiology professor Tim Spector of King's College London, concluded after you eat fast food, the number of good gut bacteria decreases in the gut. Fast food attacks and kills bacteria that work well for your body’s metabolic process.

Next, people cannot stop eating fast foods so easily. Scientists discovered that the taste of fast foods generally is very attractive to humans’ basic needs, so it is difficult not to eat fast food for people who have begun doing so. According to Sarah Klein, fast foods are as addictive as cocaine. From experimentation with rats put on a fast food diet, researchers found the rats, which were usually fed high-calorie foods, kept eating the foods even though they knew they would receive a mild electric shock in doing so. The rats could choose whether to have another choice in basic meals, but they never chose that alternative option. Scientists estimate high-calorie foods stimulate rats' pleasure-reward system. These facts show us that fast foods give us not only high calories, but also pleasure which is the same as chemical high for our brains. In other words, fast food causes our brains to release dopamine. You have to eat more and more to receive the same effect.

Finally, people shouldn’t eat fast foods regularly because fast foods can create significantly negative effects on your brain functioning. Jeff Grabmeier suggested that, “The amount of fast food children eat may be linked to how well they do in school” (2014). There isn’t really compelling evidence to show us fast foods cause slow cognitive ability; however, researchers have found that students who do eat fast foods frequently do have lower test scores in reading, math, and science than other student who don’t eat fast foods very much. The consumption of fast foods can be connected to children’s scores, their personalities, and their parents’ economic states. Also, it can be related to their eating habits, because the body is deeply affected by the person consumes. Kelly Purtell, Assistant Professor of Human Science at The Ohio University, insists that, “too much fast food can hurt how well children do in the classroom.” Fast food, also, influence people’s brain badly, so they need to consider carefully whether they are going to eat fast food.

To sum up, people should pay more careful attention when they have fast food because there are clear three reasons: (1) fast foods make you obese; (2) people develop a dependency on fast food easily, and (3) fast foods make your brain stop growth. Fast food is fit on recent people’s life-style and simple to eat. Nevertheless, people should know how fast food affects their body. If you want to be healthy, you need to think about what you can do to enjoy balanced meals. I don’t say that once you eat, you will die. The problem is that we too often eating fast food. Everyone wants to enjoy their life without suffering, so I suggest that try to live without fast food.

Sources

Tim Spector (cited Daniel Costa-Roberts ) (2015) Fast food kills gut bacteria that   

  can keep you slim, book claims. THE RUNDOWN PBS NEWSHOUR 

  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/junk-food-kills-helpful-gut-bacteria-study-

  finds/

Sarah Klein (2010) Fatty foods may cause cocain-like addiction. Health.com CNN news 

  ttp://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/28/fatty.foods.brain/

Kelly Purtell (cited OgenkiOrange) (2014)ファストフードで学力低下か　学力テストに平均点開き

  http://irorio.jp/utopia/20141223/190315/

Media Control

Iori Tada, OCU

Today, we live in a society where truths are concealed by politicians and the elite. Do you think your mind, thoughts, opinions, ideas, conceptions, and notions are really yours, or do you acquire those ideas because you have been influenced by someone or something? “Media Control” by Noam Chomsky, will shock readers who will finally see how they have been tricked. Any media that we have seen on the television, in newspapers, magazines, or advertisements, works for politicians’ profits and major company’s incomes. We must see and recognize this truth and find a way to protect our lives from their tricks. Every citizen should learn something about media control.

If you look at the function of the media, you can see the real world and you can begin to recognize that you have been controlled by the media unconsciously. Media only profits the politicians and the wealthy. In Chomsky’s view, major companies and conglomerates that invest, produce, or allocate goods make important decisions that benefit them, and they send people to the government and control it with the media. Of course, this means they are controlling the media too. They have overwhelming power in society, as they sit in prominent positions in society’s major institutions.

Now, I would like to give you an example of how they trick us by using media. Around 1908, because of mass production, companies wanted to sell a lot of their products. Therefore, they used media and proposed that consumption equals fullness of life and happiness. This is how our current consumer society was born. Even though we could use products longer, we have learned to use them in the short term and to live in a cycle of constant consumption. This system creates an economic gap between wealthy and underclass people.    

In the past, when we were at war, we didn’t need to control people’s minds. What politicians and wealthy people did was make people terrified with political violence. However, when they lost that power, they couldn’t control people anymore. People started to learn their rights and no one would obey them. Those in power needed another way to control the masses, but then how did they do it? They used propaganda.

The target of propaganda is the 80% of people who are not politicians and wealthy people. In other words, the targets are us! They want us not to think, or be concerned, but to just obey them. If we obey without question, we become victims of their propaganda. Major media companies decide how to frame the news and incidents and local media companies follow their orders. The corporate media serve them. They have control over choosing, deciding, shaping, controlling, and qualifying, all for profits of societies leaders.

Moreover, media corporations are major companies, and they make money from other major companies. Their market is advertising sponsorship and that means other companies, not their audience. Media’s earnings are based on advertising rates. So, they try to sell other companies’ products to earn higher advertising rates. The more we buy these products, the more major companies and media companies make money and again the economic gap between wealthy and underclass people increases.    

These are part of the forms of information that I learned from the book, "Media control,” by Chomsky. There are more truths about media control, and we should learn about them. We must see and recognize this truth and find a way to protect our life from their tricks before it is too late.

How Profits are Manufactured

Seiji Teruya, OCU

When we buy something, it is often natural to think about how we can acquire that thing more cheaply. How can we can these products at the lowest possible cost? We consider that decision as smart, common, and normal. Yet, many people have been aware of what manufacturing practices are happening behind the scenes even as we try to get hold of cheaper and cheaper products. Human rights violations are increasing. By taking a closer look at how the system works with people and manufacturing the products, it might help us all understand how we should interact and what we should really value as consumers in today’s society.

As for one of the reasons that people choose to work in that kind of condition may be related to what they are aiming to do with money they can earn in the factories. According to Leslie T. Chang, a journalist who researches Chinese factory labor and abuses in China, many workers that she interviewed mentioned that they are interested in taking education or learning more skills by spending the money they earned. Some of them work to provide those things for their families. However, for those who are originally from rural areas of China, it is very expensive to receive those opportunities, and it is hard to find jobs with safe working conditions to earn enough money. As a result, companies and government have been taking advantage of those people in ways that force them to work without securing fair conditions.

Under the guise of economic growth in China, companies, investors, and governments have been using people’s needs to work. While the cost of living in cities is becoming higher and higher, including costs for education and social welfare, the conditions of rural areas have been left behind which makes it necessary for people to earn more money. To earn more, they migrate to large city areas where they are typically abused. By creating this circulation of abuse, companies are able to obtain cheap labor that makes the owners of those companies even higher profits, and governments able to acquire more taxes and investments from overseas. Two of the major aspects of society have managed to successfully incorporate people into the permanent cycle of consumption. 

Considering the situation above, people who consume products manufactured in the unfair conditions should step up to change the overall system. Since every single business cannot function without consumers, people who purchase things have the responsibility and power to control how companies actually work. This will lead to popular control over government as well. To regain power as a consumer, we definitely have to reexamine our own values and listen to peoples’ voice from the factories of abuse.  

Technology Addiction: A Serious Danger to Social Well-being

Kanako Keruma, OCU

Today, technology is an important part of our daily lives. But, it is also like a coin that has both positive and negative sides. We are truly surrounded by lots of different technologies, such as smart phones, tablets, computers, and other related electronic devices. Today, people are addicted to these devices as well as having to use them out of necessity. While technology is really convenient and useful, technology also serves serious addictions in the world. People use and depend on technology too much it seems, and the negative effects can create very serious problems in our lives.

These days, people are busy on their electronic devices while driving, shopping, and even while they are in conversations with other human beings. Also, since people want to stay so connected to their friends, family and work, they easily spend a whole day dealing with these technologies. They are always worried about missing out on something important if they don’t check their phone all the time throughout the day. They basically don’t realize that they are addicted and obsessed with it.

Source: teachingwithipad.org

But there is a solution. It begins with awareness of the fact that you are becoming addicted. 

Continuing to increase the time you are spending on a computer and on internet activities is the first warning sign of addiction. If people can see this, they can begin to see their developing addiction.

Yet, even while awareness of the negative sides effects may be increasing, still people become overly addicted to their new high technology. This is having negative effects on mental health and education. 

Technology has a negative effect on mental health and learning. People need to know that the development of technology has damaged the social networks of today’s young generations because it actually takes away from the communication skills of people who are expected to live and co-exist in society. One of the problems is the excessive use of online chatting. The writing skills of today’s young generation have really weakened because of chatting. Nowadays, children rely heavily on digital communications that do nothing to improve their writing skills, such as in kanji and spelling. They don’t know the spelling of different words, and how to use grammar too.

Furthermore some technological advances cause people to be distracted, slightly stressed, isolated and obsessive.

Source: Huffington Post

In conclusion, while technology makes our lives easier with great convenience, people must be careful because it is very possible to become deeply addicted to these electronic technologies. People should think about how to use it carefully, because it can even take over your life. People had better turn off using technology regularly, take a step back, return to reality, and break away from the addiction. This way, we can all enjoy living and working together.

Will You Live to Tomorrow?

Yukari Mayer, OCU

One death in a family is often a personal tragedy. Sometimes, death is natural and expected, but sometimes, death is unnatural and senseless. This article discusses the senseless death of thousands of people every year and how we might prevent it.

According to UNICEF statistics, about 21,000 children die needlessly every day around the world. This means 1 child dies every 4 seconds, 14 children die every minute or almost 7.6 million children die every year. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reports that approximately 4 million newborn infants worldwide are dying in the first month of life, and about 7.6 million children worldwide died before their 5th birthday in 2010. Actually, the number of deaths of children under five years of age worldwide has declined from more than 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010. However this number of 7.6 million children is too far many.

About half of under-five deaths occur in only five countries; India (22%), Nigeria (11%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (6%), Pakistan (6%), China (4%). The vast majority occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa region. The situations behind a high rate of child deaths are malnutrition due to poverty, mother's poor health during childbirth, unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitary facilities and insufficient health service. In consequence, children who have weaker immune systems than adult become a victim.

Forty percent of under-five deaths are babies who are under 1 month old with various complicating illness. This number has been increased about 10 percent since 1990. The four major killers of children under age 5 are pneumonia (18%), diarrheal diseases (15%), malaria (10%), measles (5%) and HIV (4%).

Most of those killers are preventable in developed countries.

Africa had the worst mortality rate from measles. According to World Health Organization (WHO), there were approximately 396,000 people who died of measles in 2000. However the number decreased to 36,000 in 2006. What helped to decrease the number was routine measles vaccination. Strengthening routine immunization reduced mortality of measles.

A lot of children in developing countries can be prevented those diseases by receiving immunization. To save children from preventable diseases, there need to be better healthcare services. The governments of each country should increase a budget for their healthcare services and it will decline the mortality.

UNICEF, WHO and American Red Cross have been providing healthcare services to people in developing countries. We could help them by donating money to those organizations or we could volunteer with them as well.

We live without worrying about tomorrow, but you must know there are people who worry if they are alive next day. Especially children, they should have a dream, not to have a fear of tomorrow.

Researcher Stunned to Locate Uses of New Rhetorical Trope in Florida

Daniel Broudy, OCU

In light of the recent public ‘torching’ of a Quran at the hands of the head vicar of a Florida church, the coining of a new term to define this bizarre display of irony, hyperbole, and hasty generalization may be necessary.

“Hyperony” may become a useful word to represent the rhetorical effects that shine a very bright light on fools who act with blatant ignorance in over-the-top public spectacles of hypocrisy. Case in point: Pastor Terry Jones has claimed to represent or speak for the ‘Prince of Peace’ and saw an opportunity to cynically hype an issue that divides even further the "blessed peacemakers" from the “terrorists.”

The hypocrisy in this case is unusual, as it emerges from an ignorance that seeks over-dramatized attention.

The hyperbolic generalization that Mr. Jones employs in his book-burning event is necessary for him to get the peaceful multitudes to believe that all Muslims are terrorists. From a safe distance, we can see the potential for otherwise solid reasoning used by Jones' followers turn to dust if we take time to observe Jones’ objectively and reflect on the irony that Dove World Outreach Center was at the center of the bonfire.

It is worth wondering, though, what really gets burned when this kind of “dove” reaches out to the world.