The Church Reaching Out to Youths

In recent events, the Pope Benedict XVI joined twitter in attempts to attract youth to get more involved in the life of the Church. And now, our new pope, Pope Francis, also became a member of this social network. I think that this will attract more young people to take a role in the Church. A majority of youths use twitter to communicate with their friends and to find out what people are doing, like celebrities and great leaders. Youths will see that the Pope is reaching out to them through a social media that they are most familiar with which shows that he cares for them and wants them to become the best Christian they can be.

They are many benefits that can come out of our Church leader being on Twitter. Social media is often used to spread around information and messages. The Pope joining Twitter will make it easier for him to communicate with anyone, especially with youths, and to send out teachings of the Church. Although there are advantages of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis tweeting, there are also disadvantages. The internet and Twitter are very public places. Anyone can see your tweets and anyone can send you messages. These messages can be insulting and hurtful. There is a possibility that the Pope could be cyber-bullied.

Using social media to reach out to teenagers is the smartest and simplest way to do so. But there are other ways to encourage youth to take up a greater role in the Church. Parishes should promote youth groups as much as possible and in the meetings, they should make connections between the teachings of the Church and modern situations or trending topics in the world. In this way, teenagers in the youth groups could understand and relate better to our religion. It is important that youths get more involved in the Church because they are the future of this world. If they don't get involved then there is a potential that our religion will be lost.

Privacy in Social Media

As a teenager, I feel a bit obligated to join social networks since most of my peers and friends are members of some. I, myself, am a member of a lot of social media websites. The main reason I have a numerous amount of social media accounts is because it's an easy way to communicate, receive and give information, and it provides entertainment. They're a good place to talk about my opinions and feelings to people who might have the same views. Social media also keeps me up to date with news about my favourite celebrities, upcoming films, local news and events, sports, what's happening in school, and whatever is trending around the world. They provide a simple and fast way to send messages to anyone in anywhere.

In social networks, there are privacy settings where members can change who can see their profiles, posts, and tweets. For most of my social network accounts, anyone can look at my page. I usually post about my interests, like TV shows and films, or about my views and feelings. I've never really thought too hard about what I put on the internet because I know that most of the people who look at my pages are my friends or people who are in the same age group as me, I never post about which I school I go to, or where I live. I sometimes tweet where I'm going but I don't get too specific. I'm aware that I shouldn't post personal information and photos, and I never do. I don't really feel the need to worry about people finding out too much about me on the internet.

To become more responsible users of social networking websites, we should limit the amount of personal information we post. Posting too much personal things can make us vulnerable. We should keep in mind that the internet is public and that strangers can see anything we post. We should also take advantage of privacy settings since it allows you to choose who can see your pages. Always use strong passwords so that your profile is protected and secure. And last but not least, DO NOT believe everything you see on the internet.

Twitter Trouble

My generation has grown up in a world where we can share and express our feelings easily through the internet. This has lead to positive things like meeting new people and better communication with each other. But it also has lead to negative things like cyber-bullying. In one case of cyber-bullying, a group of high school students were punished for making rude tweets on Twitter about their teachers. One student named Khadijah commented that her teacher "lives at home with his mom, eat fish sticks for dinner, and all he talks about is Star Wars." I believe that it was very inappropriate for her to make fun of her teacher. Even if the teacher isn't her favourite or that he was being mean to her, there is no excuse for anyone to degrade someone else through the internet and more significantly, in person. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment, no matter who they are and what they did.

Most of the students were suspended for their tweets. They got moved from their classes and some of them only got a warning. In my opinion, these punishments are somewhat reasonable. I think the suspension was going a bit too far and the warnings aren't enough. I feel like all the students who made the rude comments should be punished the same. The different degrees of punishment suggests that each student did less or more wrong than the others. But in reality, that's not the case. All the students made fun of their teachers on Twitter where anyone can see it. The school should give the same punishments to students who committed the same offences.

The reaction of the students were unreasonable. Their defence was that it was in the heat of the moment and that they should be able to express their opinions freely. There is a great distinction between what is an opinion and what is a lie. An opinion is a view of something while a lie is a false statement. I believe that the students weren't "expressing their opinions" but posting lies to make their teachers seem inferior to them. It is degrading, unjust, and unreasonable. Like I've mentioned before, there is no valid excuse for anyone to be made of fun of like the way the students did to their teachers.