Second Life

Many people might see Second Life just as a playground online. Nevertheless, it is been used for many other purposes. It is used as a way to help abused children to rediscover their communication skills, to create a source for disabled people to socialize just as anyone else and so forth. As the Growing Up presentation showed, people can create a whole new different person and be whoever they want to be. In addition, it is so much easier to socialize with people you actually do not know in real life and talk to different people around the globe at the same time. Obama, in his campaign, by using these technologies, he got to spread his messages to gigantic group of people in really short period of time.

How Obama Did It

Using wisely the technology can provide great benefits. The use of social networks was very important in Obama’s Campaign. Even though many of the candidates of that year were using these technologies as well, they did not put as much emphasis as Obama did. However, having the right tools sometimes is not good enough; you have to know how to manage them correctly and focus them to the campaign; that was what Obama did. Trough these tools, Obama’s campaign kept in touch with his followers, letting them follow his posts and spread them to other people. Obama’s messages were straightforward; always containing what step he wanted you to take. He formed sort of a community between him and his supporters that will continue even if he was not elected President.

Growing Up Online

Nowadays, more than 90% of teenagers are online using social networks to update their profiles, upload videos, and share new pictures and so forth. This is something unavoidable. The majority of them, not to say all of them, have a computer at home. Youths use these social networks in order to communicate with their friends and be updated about what is going on in their lives even if they have not seen each other for a long time.

However, as everything, it also has its down side. When they put their information online, they are letting people in their lives. Sometimes, it might be dangerous since it is hard to control who can see your information and who cannot. This is something alarming for parents. It is almost impossible for them to control what their children do online; their children know more about this subject than their parents.

What do you think are some ways parents can get more involved in this whole new world in order to help their children to be more aware of the risks of social networking?