Persuasive essay 1st draft Ekaterina Katulko 04/11/2017 Technology growing step by step every day, so what we think was impossible yesterday maybe possible today. Our dreams or scary may be already a reality. In 1980 people can't imagine that in the future everything will be controlled by small phone. Computers nowadays control people life from shopping to dating. Do you dream to live forever or cured of terminal illness? It's sound great, but it has some opposite moral sides which may be less positive. CRISPR is gene modifying protein which may change people genes. So, children born with some genetic diseases may be cured by using this protein. Also, scientist found it possible that in future they will find the gene of aging and may change so that every person can live forever. Now the average life of the person is 70 years but maybe in future people will always be young and may choose when they want to die. It seems to be perfect future that will be. Moreover, protein Cas-9 may help to cure terminal illnesses. According to David Cyranoski in China, this August was a trial when people with the last stage of cancer had injected this protein. This trial will be made on people who terminally ill and who agreed to do so. Also, CRISPR may be harmful in the wrong place, so scientists before experiment make sure that gene in the right place. In far away future scientist said that it might be possible even change genes of the baby. Can you imagine that you can give any of the wanted characteristics to your child? Genetically modified children will be much more smarter than the average person, better looking and can do more than the usual person. That sound great but there is the negative side of this. The difference between genetically modified children and usual will be huge. What about the cost of this procedure? Not everyone could afford to make their child perfect. According to Rowan Jacobsen genetic modified children is a big moral issue that needs to take in consideration. People who can't afford to make their children super smart or super beautiful will be discriminated against them. So, it needs to be taken into consideration before making any steps to future it's quite important to calculate all negative sides and make some rules to control it. In future, it may not be possible to regulate everything in a one time. Work Cited Betz,Eric. "The CRISPR Antidote." Discover, vol. 38, no. 10, Dec. 2017, pp. 10-11. .EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=125582652&si te=ehost-live. Cyranoski, David. “Chinese Scientists to Pioneer First Human CRISPR Trial.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 21 July 2016, www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-to-pioneer- first- human-crispr-trial-1.20302 Jacobsen,Rowan. "Designer Genes." Mother Jones, vol. 42, no. 5, Sep/Oct2017, p. 44. ebscohost- EBSCOhost, libproxy.unh.edu/login?url=https://searchcom.libproxy.unh.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=124455997&site=e ds-live Kurzgesagt, director. Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR. YouTube Video, 10 Aug. 2016, www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q . Ledford, Heidi. “CRISPR: Gene Editing Is Just the Beginning.” Nature News, Nature Publishing beginning- 1.19510. Group, 7 Mar. 2016, www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-is-just-the- Vikki Jiang, Wing Kiu ENGL 401.A Persuasive Research Essay – 2nd Draft Is it only the adults to blame when it comes to the problem of teenage cyberbullying? Let’s start by asking a question: During middle or high school, have you ever pressed the “Share” or “Like” button in Facebook of a post about your friend that you think it is funny? If yes, you are regarded as being involved into a bullying event already. You might think: Is it real, I did nothing that hurt my friend directly. I am just sharing something funny about them and let more people know how funny they are. It’s real, from an adult’s especially parents and educator’s point of view, they will think that you have participated to spread news that embarrassed your peers, so you are a perpetrator of the bullying event. Some may say that the adults are really overreacting, while others may say this might the developmental stage of a serious bullying incident. In this 21st Century, every teenager carries a smart phone with them to get connected to the internet and friends. It seems abnormal for a person who does not have a phone on their own and as teenagers are getting into the age of adolescence, peer relationship is the priority. During this period, they really care about how their peers see them. Keeping updated in social media, attending gatherings often is their way to stay inside the circle. What most importantly, even how connected a teenager could be, there must be someone who is saying something bad or discriminate behind somebody’s back. This is regarded as bullying. In the past, conventional bullying often happens directly to people when they are meeting face to face. But now, it is cyberbullying where bully and the person being bullied might not know each other and people do not need to bear any responsibility of what they spoke in the internet. Monica Lewinsky, one of the early victim of cyberbullying also mentioned that cyberbullying is “loud, and there are no boarders, no perimeters around how many people can observe it once.” Base on the term responsibility, it is widely said that cyberbullying has a greater negative impact on teenagers than convention bullying does. Due to this saying, there is a wide discussion about whether adults such as parents or teachers had done enough to be concerned about what is happening with the teenagers on the internet. So is it only the adults to blame when it comes to the problem of teenage cyberbullying? To my point of view, I don’t really think so. Adults are truly innocent, as they do not grow in a digital environment. When compared to teenagers like me, I started to explore the internet and social media through at the age of 9 which is a relative young age as my mom was still using the computer purely for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. And in this year of time I am updating daily on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat whereas my mom has only created her own Facebook account where she only scrolling once a month during moments that she feels super boring. Getting to understand how the internet works is like learning a new type of language. It is always easier for a kid to learn a new language when compared to adults. This explains the same situation as entering the internet world does, adults are still at the stage of learning the basics on how the social media works while teenagers are already “communicating fluently” with their peers. When solving a conflict, the first thing that adults should do is to understand what is happening. It is always better for them to read through everything at first sight such as what was posted, what were the comments etc. If they are only given information, they might risk to chance of only getting to understand the incident from only one perspective. When they are able to read through everything posted related to the incident on social media by themselves, it allows adults to make a fairer and better judgement. The problem now is that adults are not able to reach deep to understand an incident where misjudgment might be made easily. The survey of 320 teenagers by the Sir John Cass's Foundation revealed that 53 per cent had had their picture posted online to embarrass them. However, only a fifth (22 per cent) of parents believed that their child had this experience online (Daily Mail). Parents here seemed to be ignorant about their kid’s attitude online, but it is the problem on lack of knowledge on internet usage that make parents being excluded from the internet society. It is not compulsory for parents to learn how to get news feed through social media, so when they are not connected they will only judge through what they see with their eyes and listens. Significantly, when parents see their children is behaving well when they are communicating face to face, they would never realize how their children would behave in the cyber world. Therefore whether their kid is either participating in or suffering from cyberbullying, they cannot be notified through real life communication. Other than that, adults and teenagers has a different perspective towards the term “cyberbullying”. Adults live in a more realistic world and they grow up in an environment where only conventional bullying happens among peers, a simple nicknaming or gossiping among teenagers could be regarded as bullying. These actions could also be regarded as bullying in the networked world too but what is different from conventional bullying and cyberbullying is that cyberbullying involves people form the whole internet world where the old-style of bullying is only being noticed within a small community. As mentioned in a speech by Monica Lewinsky, one of the early victim of cyberbullying, “I was seen by many but truly known by few.” (Shame Sells). This significantly shows how different in terms of coverage between conventional bullying and cyberbullying does. The coverage expansion also means the change of perspective on how people deal with a particular incident. As teenagers have been a long time user in the internet world, they sometimes do not feel like bullying is happening around them. In other words, they do not regard meanness and cruelty as bullying. They would rather regard it as the term – drama, according to what danah boyd had found. Drama and bullying are actually the same but teenagers treated bullying as drama as long as they are not a victim or the main perpetrator of an incident. The book also mentioned that “Unlike bullying, which presumes a victim and a perpetrator, referring to conflict as drama allows teens to distance themselves from any emotional costs associated with what is happening.” It is the matter of responsibility that teenagers tries to distance themselves from being a participant of bullying incidents. By regarding bullying as drama, students seemed not to be related to a contributor of bullying. Given a typical case in danah’s book, Caleb, a black seventeen-year-old from North Carolina thinks that cyberbullying was a “middle school stuff” that it would be immature in high school. While he was sharing more and more pranking and punking events that happened in his school, danah found out that these events might be easily defined as bullying by adults. Summing up all the explanations above, when teenagers has a different perspective on what is meant by bullying, it is hard to debate whether it is really the teenager’s fault or not. Moreover, with the enormous coverage of the internet world, if everyone who is notified of the “drama” should be punished, there could have been numerous people that is in the line of receiving punishment. Therefore it is really hard for parents to distinguish whether teenagers are behaving appropriately and not having any relation with cyberbullying. Still, from another perspective, some may say that adults is really to blame when handling teenage cyberbullying matters. Adults are too focused on who to blame and have surveillance in a less appropriate way which results in a distanced relationship with adults and an increase in suffering of psychological diseases. Adults especially parents has also experienced the period of adolescence, they should clearly understand that ordinary way of punishment does not work well with teenagers, they will not feel guilty of applying violence on peers which it does not really help reduce events happening again. boyd also has the same perspective as she points out “when punishment is the focus, there’s often little incentive for understanding how punitive measures enable the cycle of violence to continue.” This explains that the attitude of adults who try to introduce traditional way of problem solving method does not really work well when dealing with teenage cyberbullying. The platform of bullying has changed so does the problem solving method, finding the best way to make teenagers realize their mistake is far more important than punishing them where it is less effective. Teenage adolescence could be extremely rebellious, punishment neither work on them nor help build trust between them and adults. Adults “lose a valuable opportunity to help teens navigate the complicated interpersonal dynamics and social challenges that they face.” Mentioned by boyd shows that adults has the responsibility to direct teenagers to the correct way of involving in social media. They should come up with new problem solving methods as bullying has already moved into a new era. Due to a low accepted problem solving method that distanced the relationship between teenagers and adults, teenagers tend to refuse to share their feeling with their parents but sharing more with peers. According to a news report by Daily Mail, it is reported from a research by Sir John Cass's Foundation revealed that some 49 per cent tell their friends about their online experiences as they think that their parents does not “act appropriately”. When adults are the best people to turn to as they are experienced with teenage matters, but teenagers does not trust them. As a result, victims of cyberbullying also report a range of psychological consequences relating to anxiety, depression, self-harm or suicidal thoughts (Daily Mail). This helps supports that adults is to blame as they are closing gates to teenagers not allowing them to gain support from a better source. The lack of trust between teenagers and adults leads not only to increase cyberbullying happening, but also the psychological consequence following up. Even so, there is research that found out the stress that a bullying victim has is more about the nature of the specific incident rather than the method of its delivery. This means that stress of bullying in not categorized into conventional bullying and cyberbullying, so it is not adult’s fault when bullying is specifically labeled as cyberbullying. Therefore there is not a really clear division on the ability and responsibility of adults when bullying is brought to the internet. According to the research done by Sheri Bauman and Matthew L. Newman, they have been reading through speculations about negative consequences of being victimized by technology, but reached to a question that there is a few empirical studies offer some clues. The objective of the study is to compare the degree of distress experienced by incidents of traditional and cyberbullying that were similar all respects other than the method of perpetration. Questionnaires were distributed to 588 college students in their psychology class, the result found out was surprisingly different from what has always been thought. From the research, the level distress being cartooned in a conventional or cyber way has a mean of 4.8 and 4.44 respectively, students naked photos being spread in a conventional or cyber ways score the mean point of 6.14 and 6.19 respectively. There are still many indicators that shows the level of stress gained by the two ways of bullying are nearly the same, which could clearly show that the form of bullying is not a reliable indicator to define the level of seriousness of an incident. Another surprising result is that female has a higher stress level than male do, but still, there is no any relation to the channel of delivery of bullying. Adults are less blamed in conventional bullying as cyberbullying does, but now, research had found out that the level of distress on teenagers are related to the method of delivery rather than the way it is presented. Therefore, adults should not be blamed particularly on their inability on handling cyberbullying. In order to relief the seriousness of cyberbullying, some measures could be done by adults. Suggestions given through a research by Ikuko Aoyma and Tony L. Talbert might be helpful. Firstly from educator’s perspective, it is important for them to notify teenagers that there is cyberfootprints on the internet whenever they go. Teenagers are not free from responsibility and they could be caught through following the traces of IP address. Moreover, educators must let teenagers know that cyberbullying has been a crime already, the report had stated that “In 2006, the U.S. congress passed a law making it a federal crime to ‘annoy, abuse, threaten or harass’ another person through the Internet”. Allowing teenagers to understand how serious the consequence would be when bullying online could help to allow teenagers to think twice before posting anything online to embarrass or make fun of their peers. And for parents, as stated in the research, “parents are primary source to teach moral values and social expectations to their children even through influential mass media transmits contradicting messages. Parents are an important source for teenagers to understand the concept of being responsibility. Parents is also the guardian, they have the authority of undergoing surveillance over their children, but this does not mean they could overuse the power such as setting up fake teenage accounts on social media to monitor their children’s behavior online. The proper way of surveillance suggested is to begin with setting rules on Internet use and installing filtering software along with notifying teenagers. The notification step is important as teenagers are extremely protective of their privacy, so parents should not be too pushy about monitoring, restricting and controlling their children’s online behavior. Parents also has more source on their kid’s personal information, therefore they could talk to their kids how to handle personal information properly online. As said there is no boundaries in the Internet, teenagers should start to get noticed on how to protect their information online. At least, they would not be easily be made fun of what they had posted online. All in all, adults of course plays an important role in providing teenagers correct method and behavior on social media, but it is not fully their fault of this topic that is increasingly significant online. There are still many coincidence that leads to it, with the help of different stakeholders, the problem could be solved better and all-rounded. Let’s end up by what Monica Lewinsky’s had said “Public shaming as a blood sport must stop”.
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