So, the world’s first website went live 25 years ago, and I was asked to have a chat about how the internet has changed our lives over the past 25 years … I cast out on Facebook (as always), read a few new things – e.g. are we wasting time on the internet, and then enjoyed my chat with Hannah on Premier Radio. Extracts were also featured on the news segments of Big Breakfast and The Worship Hour.
I’ve been having a bit of a chat with Heather and Brittany from KidsEmail.Org, so I looked at what they’re offering. Their email offers mail monitoring, time restrictions, mail queue, block senders, contact manager, remove ads, GPS tracker and custom mailboxes – a number of features that can be used, definitely with younger kids, and then gradually giving more responsibility to the child, until they move onto a grown-up option. Heather offered the following blog post:
The internet seems to get a bad rap in the media, and while some of the criticism is completely justified, could we really go back to living life without our online accessibility? Personally I couldn’t! So much of my life is centered around online activity in one way or another. Consequently, staying safe online is a top priority, and so is utilizing all that the internet has to offer.
There are many benefits to having the internet and we shouldn’t shy away from using it. With the proper tools in place we can be safer now than ever before, giving us the ability to teach ourselves and our children to respect online interactions and behaviour.
The internet is our source for fast information, and as a whole, can be rewarding and positive. Below are 9 points to demonstrate just how positive the internet can be.
And of course… it’s always open – This says it all. The internet is a 24/7 running machine.
All things considered, the internet is what we make it. It can be one of the most rewarding tools in our day to day life, and can be seen as significantly positive experience.
73% of teens have or have access to a smartphone; 91% of teens go online using a mobile device, and 24% of teens say they go online “almost constantly”
Fully 73% of American teens have, or have access to, a smartphone and 30% have a basic cell phone. Our survey of more than 1,000 teens finds that 92% of teens report going online daily – including 24% who say they go online “almost constantly.”
The study also finds that Facebook remains a dominant social media platform for the bulk of American teens, with 71% of all teens reporting use of the platform. Instagram and Snapchat are also quite popular with teens, especially girls. 61% of girls use Instagram compared with 44% of boys, and 51% of girls use Snapchat, compared with 31% of boys.
Looks like it could be worth a look:
For most of us, our relationship with spam began almost gently: those short, jokey email messages reaching out to us from distant lands, with an intriguing, almost whimsical character. But they quickly grew into more forceful entreaties to help, support, defend or publicise some victim of an injustice we didn’t understand in a place we’d never heard of, adverts for exotic pharmaceuticals with the alleged power to enhance pretty much any body part you could think of. Then bizarre offers began to arrive that promised huge rewards in exchange for granting the simplest of help to someone caught out on the wrong side of a conflict, coup d’etat, bereavement or legacy – interspersed with excited, conspiratorial messages about stocks in not-quite-familiar companies whose value was on the verge of going through the roof, honest.
Read full review.
A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future. The internet went from being something exotic to being boring utility, like mains electricity or running water – and we never really noticed. So we wound up being totally dependent on a system about which we are terminally incurious. You think I exaggerate about the dependence? Well, just ask Estonia, one of the most internet-dependent countries on the planet, which in 2007 was more or less shut down for two weeks by a sustained attack on its network infrastructure. Or imagine what it would be like if, one day, you suddenly found yourself unable to book flights, transfer funds from your bank account, check bus timetables, send email, search Google, call your family using Skype, buy music from Apple or books from Amazon, buy or sell stuff on eBay, watch clips on YouTube or BBC programmes on the iPlayer – or do the 1,001 other things that have become as natural as breathing.
The internet has quietly infiltrated our lives, and yet we seem to be remarkably unreflective about it. That’s not because we’re short of information about the network; on the contrary, we’re awash with the stuff. It’s just that we don’t know what it all means. We’re in the state once described by that great scholar of cyberspace, Manuel Castells, as “informed bewilderment”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know