Social Networks in the News: Toddlers as Young as 3 to Learn About Internet Dangers

DailyMail Article: Toddlers as young as 3 should be taught the dark side of the internet

When on the Daily Mail today I found this story about how ministers now believe that internet education can never start too young and the government have set about creating new campaigns to educate our youngest generations. The growth in technology has led to really young children being at risk to the online world. I am always using the train and bus as a way to get around and the amount of times I have seen a parent give their child their smart phone or tablet to play on is huge. These new exciting forms of technology offer vast forms of entertainment and occupation but they also put more and more children at risk of the dangers the internet has to offer.

'With toddlers frequently using web-linked devices like iPads, the government says educating them about the risks cannot start too soon. Very young children will be told how to manage their 'on-line identity' and why they should not put 'inappropriate' information on the internet.'

The article points out that officially children under the age of 13 are not allowed to use Facebook. However it does not take a rocket  scientist to realise that all you have to do is change your year of birth when signing up to 13+ to be allowed.

I did consider using this aspect within my animation before but decided I would then be trying to cover too much ground and would risk complicating my project. I thought about using a child who had just begun at secondary school so would have been aged 11 who joined Facebook in order to fit in but then became the target of cyber-bullies. In the end I decided my project would be stronger if I just focused on cyber-bullyng rather than covering under-age use too.

My Narrative Description

When the Virtual Becomes Real is an animation short that is based around the issue of cyber-bullying. The narrative and the style of the animation have been chosen to question the psychological effects that cyber-bullying can have on an individual and how cyber-bullies can be overcome. The style of animation will be stop motion photography but with animation over the top to blend the real world with the virtual on-line world together.

When the Virtual Becomes Real starts off with Rosie Shepherd, a sixteen year old school girl walking home from school. She reads a news story on her phone which talks about how popular the social network site Your Book is and how any teenagers without it risk becoming outcasts. Therefore once she gets home she goes into the study and decides to sign up to Your Book. Once she has created her profile she goes through adding all of the people she knows from school.

The next morning when she is woken by her alarm clock she sees that a few of the people have already started accepting her friend requests. Feeling happy and popular she gets ready and leaves for school. As soon as she arrives home again that afternoon she logs straight onto Your Book to check out her profile. She sees someone has written on her profile about how they love that she has finally got Your Book, it is some girl who she doesn’t know too well but this doesn’t stop her feeling excited. As the evening progresses her phone updates her as people start to like that comment. Slowly people start leaving other comments to dig at Rosie. Over the next few days anything she does or says on Your Book starts to receive more and more negative reactions.

As the nasty comments build Rosie gets more and more upset, she gets receives a lot of nasty responses to a photo she has uploaded of her and her cat. The comments even say how the cat is Rosie’s only friend. Rosie herself suddenly becomes animated herself. All the abuse is too much and too real for her, what had just been something virtual before is completely real and the comments have become imbedded within her mind. We see a sequence which shows the comments floating around in her mind, never going away.

Rosie is then shown struggling to sleep and then struggling to get ready for school as she becomes depressed. She can’t take it anymore, finally one afternoon after receiving more cyber abuse on her profile she closes the laptop and pushes it away. She sits in bed upset hugging a teddy for comfort. She is looking out at the window when she sees a vision in her head. The vision is of her taking a load of pills in order to end all her pain and suffering, escaping this nasty world. Suicide is an option that many victims to take, but not Rosie. She then closes the blind banishing those thoughts; she will not let the bullies defeat her. Instead she opens the laptop back up and instead goes through blocking every single person who has cause her pain over Your Book. The cyber-bullies can no longer access her, the platform which they relied on for their abuse has been removed.