Cscd03 tell me to study, study, study…”. this

CSCD03 – Assignment 1 Part 1: Addicted to the Internet? 1)    a) Yes, I partially agree with the directorwhen he says the root cause of the boys’ problem is loneliness. There are lotsof experiments that support the loneliness claim; for example, the Journal ofPediatrics did a study which revealed the following. “ Heavy gamers, who playedan average of 31 hours a week, compared with 19 hours a week for otherstudents, were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and socialphobias.

” (Rabin R., 2011)  Lonelinessis a huge factor but social pressure to succeed in school is also anotherfactor to consider when looking at video game addicts. I believe teenagers usevideo games as an escape mechanism from the stressful school environment; especiallyin China due to its high population.

Kids in high populated areas areconstantly pressured to study from parents, peers, schools etc. In the videoone of the teenager’s mentions that “ my parents always tell me to study, study, study…”. This constant pressure to succeed get so overwhelming that teenagersescape to the virtual life of video games. Just like as Jeffrey Davis states inhis article “ For many people, the world of video games is a perfect break froma reality filled with deadlines, stress, and responsibilities.

People play thembecause they are fun, interesting and a way to relax.” As soon as they start torealize how stimulating video games are, these kids start replacing theirfriends with friends with similar mindsets; other video game addicts online. Thisis when loneliness starts to become a real problem. Ipersonally don’t think the director has the best treatment method for curingthe teenager’s addiction.

The director should instead help these teenagers finddifferent ways of coping with this pressure such as involving them in differentextracurricular activities. Helping them cope with this pressure will preventthe kids from having withdrawal as soon as they leave the center. Personally, Idon’t think putting them through boot camp will help, it might actually makethem more rebellious.

b)    A lot of people believe video games is amale dominant industry, so I can understand why the video had mostly shots ofmales playing video games, but things have changed in the past couple of years. In Kim Gittleson’s BBC article she states, “ the dynamics of who is gaming hassteadily changed in the last five years, as women increasingly flock to videogames, with the latest industry figures in the US showing that 48% of gamersare female.”  Also, whenyou think of video games, you think of Xbox games, Play Station games, Leagueof Legends etc. but people rarely associate cell phone games with video games, and that is why that stat above needs to be explained further. Yes, the numberof female video gamers has increased but this is because even though males arepredominantly playing console games, females are participating far more in cellphone games. For example, Kim Gittleson also mentions in her article that “ 60%of popular smartphone game Temple Run’s players are female”.

In this day andage where everyone has smartphones, these games also need to be categorized asvideo games because they can also become a form of addiction. This beliefthat smartphones are not categorized as video games is why I believe this videomainly shows males at the addiction center.  2)    As a kid born in the 90’s I got toexperience the rise of technology from the Nokia brick phones to flagship phonessuch as iPhone X.

So much has changed over the years and I feel kids born inthe 2000s are more prone to be addicted to the internet than me. In 2017, kidsin grade 5 or 6 have the latest smartphones, while I got my first piece of tech(ie. iPod) when I was in grade 10. When I was in elementary school I spent amajority of my time playing outside; even when winter came around me and myfriends would play football outside, or have a good old-fashioned snowballfight. When I look back at my childhood a lot of it was spent socializingversus staying home and playing video games or surfing the internet. As I gotolder and transitioned into high school, there was more importance on usingtechnology and integrating everything with the internet. Socializing gottransformed to messengers, playing outside got transformed to stay insideplaying video games etc.  Since Ihave seen the best of both worlds, I am able to ground myself and still keep my” internet addiction” in check, while kids born in the 2000s don’t have anythingelse to compare to.

I’m not saying that I haven’t spent large portions of theday on the internet but I’m able to control when I need to focus and I guess mypast life experiences have helped me in preventing this addiction from takingover my life; like the kids in China.   Part 2: Is metadata “ more revealing thancontent”? 3)    The main issue with collecting any sort ofdata is an individual’s privacy, how much of it is revealed and how much iskept private. Intelligence agencies started to collected metadata because theybelieved tapping into people’s phone calls would be violating their privacy. Metadatais data about the data. For example, telephone metadata is data about where youmade the phone call? who did you talk to? how long did you talk for? etc. Personally, I believe this data is way more revealing than simply recordingphone calls, and a lot of other professionals have the same belief. Mr. Feltonfrom American Civil Liberties Union mentioned in one of his legal cases.

“ Calling patterns can reveal when we are awake and asleep; our religion, if aperson regularly makes no calls on the Sabbath or makes a large number of callson Christmas Day; our work habits and our social aptitude; the number offriends we have, and even our civil and political affiliations” (Kelley M., 2013).  With all this data and thecomputing power that computers have today, a lot of personal information (whichpeople want to be kept private) can be extrapolated with very minimal effort.  A fewStanford students wanted to further examine this obstruction of privacy, sothey created an app called “ Metaphone”, which tracks and analyzes phone calls.

More than 500 people signed up for this experiment and gave access to theirphone’s metadata. The application specifically collected the length of a textmessage, whether it was an outgoing or incoming call, duration of a phone call, and the phone numbers. As mentioned in Nsikan Akpan’s article, the students collected” 62, 229 unique phone numbers, 251, 788 calls, and 1, 234, 231 texts.” The studentsthen applied simple statistical algorithms to figure out key details aboutthese individuals. Using public records and mainstream applications such asGoogle, Facebook, and Yelp, the students were able to identify 82% of the phonenumbers collected. They were also able to identify which individuals were in arelationship with an astonishing 80% accuracy.

There was a lot more revealed in Mr. Akpan’s article but I have justmentioned a few.  If a fewStanford students were able to figure out such private information with thislimited data, just imagine how much the NSA can figure out about your lives. The NSA has much more data collected, as well as far superior machine learningalgorithms. Just as Edward Snowden said, “ Don’t trust the government”.   ReferencesAkpan, N.

(2016). The secret things you give away through yourphone metadata. online PBS NewsHour. Available at: https://www. pbs. org/newshour/science/your-phone-metadata-is-more-revealing-than-you-thinkAccessed 15 Jan.

2018. Davis, J. (n.

d.). Video Games – An Escape From Reality?.

online Rcg. org. Available at: https://rcg. org/realtruth/articles/346-vgaefr. html Accessed 14 Jan.

2018. Gittleson, K. (2014). Is the video game industry sexist?.

onlineBBC News. Available at: http://www. bbc.

com/news/technology-27824701 Accessed14 Jan. 2018. Kelley, M. (2013). Computer Science Professor Explains How PhoneCall Metadata Can Be More Revealing Than Content.

online BusinessInsider. Available at: http://www. businessinsider. com/metadata-can-be-more-revealing-than-content-2013-8Accessed 15 Jan. 2018. Rabin, R.

(2011). Video Games and the Depressed Teenager. online Well Blogs. Available at: https://well.

blogs. nytimes. com/2011/01/18/video-games-and-the-depressed-teenager/Accessed 14 Jan. 2018.