POST 2: DIGITAL CULTURE

Technology plays a big role in our society today, every day we encounter different kinds of it from gadgets to appliances.

Technology make things simple, if you want to go to 10th floor from first floor you can use the elevator, if you want to talk to your friends you can use your mobile phone and what's more amazing if you want to know something there is Internet.
Through internet you can discover a lot of things; you can also meet new friends there with the help of social networking sites. Through this you can talk to somebody even though they're living in another country. But then these things may be good or bad sometimes. 

Ravi Kumar wrote in his article "Social Media and Social Change: How Young People are Tapping into Technology" that 70% of young people believe that social media is an instrument for change. There are five examples given on how social media can make change. First is fighting corruption youth are using social media in order to monitor the public service of a certain place. Youth think that it plays a big role in fighting against corruption.

Second is evaluating schools in the Philippines, youth uses social media in order to comment on their schools so it may improve. Next is using e-petition in Latvia so that their fellowmen can submit petition for policy change.

Fourth, fighting stereotypes a 13 year old girl send an online petition to a toy company so that the toy oven that his brother want can be packed for boys not for girls only, so that his brother would think that it is not bad to be chef if you’re a boy. The petition received 45,000 signatures maybe because there was also a help of social media.

Lastly, tackling sanitation issues students from Pakistan develop a web based around the world, youth are using social media to monitor the effectiveness of public service.

Technology and social media can help to make a difference from a small idea then the idea of your friends and together with the other people’s idea can make a change. These things usually happen to social media one post may change a lot of thing a comment may be helpful and every word you put there may change ones perspective. Everything that you put there is your responsibility.

Social media is amazing that it can bond people from different places, people who don’t know each other at all but they have one thought, goal or idea. One of the event in the Philippines prove this thing, just single post that was pass through social media encourage a lot of people to take part to voice out their opinion and disappointment to the pork barrel scam. There are a lot of people who gathered in Luneta Park in order to tell the government to fix this mess. It started from just one post.

“Today, 43% of the world’s population is 25 years old or younger. This young group is impatient and ready to change the world.”

 

In contrast to this social media do also have negative sides. Some people in social media especially in Facebook are bashers they give negative comments they are like critics they judge without understanding they just write what’s on their mind not even thinking that it may hurt someone.
According to Tonyo the writer of the article “Ang mgaComments sa Facebook,” maybe this is one of the disadvantages of Filipinos having too much freedom of expression.

There are a lot of netizens giving negative comments though they do not really know who the person is, they don’t care that they are hurting that person’s feeling. So sometimes it is frightening to give comments because just because of one mistake people may bash you that are why some post does really have a lot of comment which is not really related to the post. Also some people comment though they haven’t really read the article.

Because of this things a lot of people fight in Facebook, some use foul words and they even give comments to your personal life. They are insensitive in a way they even give negative comments to a random person’s status or picture.  So instead of commenting negative stuff it is better not to comment anything, if you can’t say anything good just keep quiet. All of us are given freewill to express ourselves but remember we must be sensitive to the feelings of other people we don’t know what they are really facing.

Then again, social media have negative sides wherein people are being more self-centered. They are more being concerned in their image and what they feel. So they’ll just post or comment everything. I can see a lot of this in Facebook when pass through some public posts there are thousands of comments and most of the comments are not connected to the post or if it’s connected it’s a negative comment on something or someone. Well, I do understand the feeling that you want to comment something because it is really annoying and stuff that feeling you want to kill them but then it is better to say nothing at all instead of saying a lot but it’s full of trash. Think first before you click, because every post or comment may affect your life in a negative way and it may as well destroy you in school or work. So it is better to keep quiet than to destroy someone’s life through your comments, you don’t know what they are facing.

“Siguro ay isa ito sa mga disadvantage ng pagkakaroon ng sobrang freedom of expression nating mga Pinoy. Kalayaang makapanlait sa kapwa na kaya mong gawin anytime kahit hindi mo ito kilala.”