The assignment for this week in Mr. Garrioch’s class is the ‘Three Person Story’ - which is an assignment to write the same story in three different people’s view. After getting a horrible score on the last assignment, the Catfish Review, I brainstormed hard and long (?) to make an outstanding ‘Three Person Story’.
The first thing that came into mind was as always, the ‘triangle love relationship’ between two guys and one girl. This topic was quite tempting because I actually saw and experienced the similar situation so closely before. Also, I had an experience of writing about love story in Mr. Garrioch’s class last semester (which received a good score).
The next topic that came into my mind was a story concerning basketball and the team. I thought about making the three people in the story as the captain of the team, the ace of the team, and the least valuable player on the team. In addition, I thought of a different setting such as a model student playing sport, defying his or her parents’ scolds.
Another topic that I thought about was named the “Mission Impossible”, dealing the episode about cheating in the test. I planned to set my three perspectives as the cheater, the teacher, and the bystander. I thought this was a good idea since I believed that I could give enough emotion and tension to each character in the story.
The last topic that I thought was about the adopted boy or girl searching for his or her real parents. If I actually choose this topic, I’m going to set three perspectives as the adopted boy (the main character), the real parents, and the parents who adopted the boy. I think this is a pretty good topic since I can merge in some seriousness, sincerity, and heartwarming effect in the story.
These are the topics that I brainstormed for the topic. I dropped the second topic after brainstorming and now I’m balancing between the other three. Each of them has their own strong points and weak points. I plan to ponder over for next one or two days and start writing the story.
Coming into the dormitory after a day’s hard work, I rush forward to my desk and turn on the laptop. After a minute or two, I click on the Internet Explorer icon, sighing of the thought of various homework and quizzes due tomorrow. After a second or two, a screen pops up. However, the screen doesn’t show familiar Google, Naver, or Yahoo screen. Instead, there comes out a simple blue and white icon. On the right of that icon, red alerts show that I got few notifications to check on. With a sufficient smile on the face, I began to plunge myself into the world of Facebook.
Just like me, many people nowadays have a close life with Social Network Systems (SNS), similar to one above. In fact, it is so much into our lives; we can’t get along without them. Accordingto the official statistics by Facebook, more than 500 million active users over the world and half of them log in every day. Another SNS called MySpace had over 43.2 million users in 2009. Seeing this, we can’t deny that social network systems have become part of our lives.
Social networks are on-line, computer-based networks that help building social relationships with people who share same interests. SNSs consist of a profile that represents a user, list of other users with shared interests, and the views of connections from other users. Along with these profiles, SNSs provide users various features such as messaging, leaving comments, notifications photo sharing, etc. to share ideas, events and interests. Through these profiles and features, SNSs are characterized in a way that they allow us to make connections with people who otherwise would not have known.
Developing through various success and failures, SNSs nowadays show great influence over the whole society. This result is rooted in the basic characteristic of SNSs: egocentric. Unlike online communities that existed before SNSs that focuses on users’ shared interests, SNSs form around the user him/herself. This gave users the feeling of being in the middle of the society and events. With this, SNS users massively increased, empowering SNSs with great influences and effects it has today. Some effectsand influences are positive and essential to us, while some are harmful andmust be improved.
First, SNSs let us communicate actively with numerous people, integrating more social interaction in our lives. SNSs nowadays, users have ability to comment and respond to statements or comments from other users, initiating communication. These comments are not limited to words and sentences. There can be comments using photos, music, and even videos. By allowing such active feedbacks, users can widen their social interaction with people close to them and with people who are far away but share interests.
Second, social networking sites enhance mobility of its users. SNSs offer mobility to its users through access of information and communication with others at any time and in any places. Chance of meeting people with the same interests is greatly increased. For example, a user in South Korea can form a connection with a user in San Francisco, sharing the interest of Golden State Warriors. Along with that, users can maintain a constant connection with existing friends and family who might live in places far away.
Third, social networking sites provide freedom by bringing people together with varying backgrounds who might otherwise never have met. This kind of communication can be possible because of the virtual anonymity of online experience. Anonymity reduces social discomfort and discrimination, or stereotyping of age, disabilities, race, gender, or culture that might have acted as a barrier to join, interact, and communicate with others in real-life. By communicating online, people aren’t concerned by physical differences and focus on a deeper connection, discovering similarities that may have been previously disregarded.
Fourth, SNSs offer news and information that actually interests and is important to the users. Through the connections between close friends and users with common interests, SNS users can gain information that they need or attain information that interests them. This differentiates SNSs from various portal sites such as Google or Naver, which presents innumerable information and news. However, most of them turn out to be unimportant or useless to people.
While social network systems prove to be a great help in our lives, SNSs don’t only have positive effects. They definitely have downsides that must be improved. First of all, SNSs are insecure about the users’ privacy. Strange people can take a look at any information in any profiles if they want. This means that users’ home, phone number, school, close friends, etc. are all in danger. This can lead toproblems such as hacking into personal computers and stalking. For one, there was a Facebook user who got his account hacked because of clicking on fake emails. Fake emails stated that “You requested your Facebook account password and the email associated with your account to be changed. This process was initiated by someone correctly answering your security question.” This kind of email could have tricked any user at all.
Second, users can get addicted to SNSs. As mentioned before, people love the idea of the events forming around him or her. Some people are able to control themselves in those feelings. However, some others aren’t able to resist that and sometimes neglect their duties. For example, teenagers who aren’t able toresist the temptation of SNSs often find themselves with lower grades than they expected. This is also shown in a survey that will be talked about later on.
Third, SNSs lessen face-to-face interaction in real-world. Through development of social network systems, people now don’t have to meet somewhere outside their homes to talk or discuss. They just have to sit in their couches and chat with each other. This leads to lack of face to face communication with people. However, even though face to face communication can be laborious and annoying, it conveys much more meaning than just chatting. Through signs such as making faces, eye contacts, body language, and etc., face to face communication delivers such emotions and feeling that can’t be said through chatting in SNSs. Severance of face to face communication can cause disability to properly express emotions or understand such gestures and motions.
With all these negative effects, should we keep using SNSs? Do positive effects overpower negative effects to keep us using SNSs? In my opinion, we should keep making use of SNSs. Actually, it’s not something you can keep. SNSs are way too much into our lives to stop using it. Without SNSs, people of our generation won’t be able to communicate thoroughly, or keep in contact. SNSs are not what we can choose but are what we have to accept. Still, accepting SNSs doesn’t solve its downsides. By accepting, I don’t mean to take it on thoughtlessly. Users will have to continue their use with necessary improvements and supplements.
What kind of steps can we take to prevent leak of private information? There can be many different solutions. For one, social networking sites can block any personal information from users who are not friends with us. Another solution can be omitting the phase where new users write down their information. However, if we take on the first solutions, users will feel frustrated when they are looking for other users with similar interests. Also, if social networking sites adopt the second solution, there will be no point of the profile at all because it is profile that contains information which introduces the users to other people. In my opinion, social networking sites should respect the autonomy of its users. The users should be the people to choose what they are going to do about their information. Users should be able to select which information they are going to put on their profile and which information they are not. For example, one user can choose to show his name, birth day, and hobbies, but block his address and telephone number. Also, a user can decide to show all her friends only to friends who are close to her. In such ways, users will be responsibility of any leak of personal information in social network systems. What SNSs can do, however, is to strengthen their security program of sites and programs. Even though users decide to block certain information, it can still be seen through hacking. Social network sites programmers will have to prevent that in order to protect its users’ personal information.
Also, solutions to SNS addiction are necessary. Addiction is a primary reason why people are reluctant to start SNS and it is also a primary reason the users quit SNSs. There can be two kinds of solutions. First, there can be a type of solution where users can act on. These solutions depend on honesty and efforts from the users. For example, we can promise ourselves to only use Facebook 15 minutes a day. Nobody regulates us. Carrying out the promise entirely depends on us. Second, there can be a type of solution where SNSs’ programmers can act on. For example, they can make the sites to go down if some user uses it more than the regulation time. However, no matter what kind of regulations that SNSs provide, there’s only one way to prevent SNS addiction – self-control.
Solutions to the last problem – the lack of face to face communication – doesn’t come up so easily. SNSs have infiltrated our lives enough to make us stare at iPhones even though people meet in a café or restaurant. In my opinion, this kind of flow is impossible to avoid. Humans have advanced technology to gain more comfort and convenience. Now that people have gained convenience, they won’t let go of it easily. However, face to face communication on SNSs can be suggested. Since it is impossible to pull out the users from SNSs, we will have to pull the necessary interactions into the SNSs. Now that technology have developed greatly, face to face communication such as video chatting is possible. By developing this technology and making it more convenient, we will be able to fill in the lack of face to face communication.
“Hey, son, I think we need some peanut butter and strawberry jam soon.” Dad says, on one Sunday morning. Sooner or later, I’m walking along the high stands full of jams and butter in Wal-Mart, with just a five-dollar bill in my pocket. Just like that, Wal-Mart allures us with is such low prices of products we need. According to the article “Does Wal-Mart Destroy Communities”, Wal-Mart provides us, the consumers, with a choice that would have not been available before. This “choice”, adds up to the higher quality of life, allowing its consumers to save up more budgets to spend somewhere else. However, it is an unfortunate truth that Wal-Mart is blindfolding its consumers with the “choice” they provided from all the harms and damages they presented to all the people and society around it. The primary victims of Wal-Mart’s hidden truth mostly concern its employees and local communities. Specifically, the wages and working conditions of employees along with closings of local shops and businesses are Wal-Mart’s primary source of assault. There is no doubt that Wal-Mart benefited its consumers by its never-ending desire to wring out the costs. Still, on the other side of such benefits, there exists a much darker side from workers and local merchants. There is more harm than gain from Wal-Mart’s deeds, and the first darkness that Wal-Mart tried to hide is impacts of it on the employees.
One of the most concerning issues about employees are about wages and working conditions. As mentioned in the article “The Price of Pickles”, most of the full-time workers at Wal-Mart work 40 hours at the most getting paid around 7~9 dollars an hour. Some defenders of all-mighty Wal-Mart claim that 7~9 dollars is more than twice the minimum wage. Nevertheless, that is just another excuse and a blindfold to fool the world outside Wal-Mart. Unfortunately many employees in Wal-Mart receive free medical aid or equivalent relief programs from in numerous states. Now, this is a sufficient piece of information that no matter how hard you work in Wal-Mart, you still won’t be able to escape from the swamp of poverty. According to the article “Always Low Wages”, Wal-Mart provides nearly 1.3 million jobs. Although Wal-Mart might be able to squeeze through the chain of laws, we can say that Wal-Mart is responsible of at least 1.3 million poverties or near-poverties. Opinions may vary about whether 1.3 million near-poverties is more harm than supplying cheap products national-wide. Sadly, there is more (POP). There are various reported cases of Wal-Mart forcing the employees to work overtime without proper pay or locking them in the shop to “prevent stealing”. In addition, Wal-Mart blocks or steers its employees away from the union. One union organizer says in the article, ‘Wal-Mart is one of the most anti, if not the most aggressively anti-union company in the entire history of the United States’. One incident where Wal-Mart closed all of its fresh-meat departments when meat workers of Wal-Mart constructed labor union clearly supports such statement. Now it might be easier to decide between benefits from Wal-Mart’s low prices and harms done to its employees. If it is still not easy, another story about Wal-Mart’s international/foreign employees will make the decision easier.
Put in a nutshell, the most serious damage done by Wal-Mart is in the developing countries, as strongly mentioned in “The Price of Pickles”. Wal-Mart employs labor from such countries at a ridiculously cheap price. For example, in Bangladesh, Wal-Mart hired about 189,000 seamstresses, paying only around 13 and 17 cents per hour. Not only that, those seamstresses work 14 hours a day, having 10 days off at most a year. This ruthless employment in developing countries like China or Bangladesh is harming hundreds and thousands of people worldwide. In other words, Wal-Mart is assisting developing countries to maintain poverty. Thus, Wal-Mart is dealing harm not only is the United States, but also internationally.
Another most concerning issues about harm done by Wal-Mart concerns the local communities around it. Most visible harm is destroying of local shops and businesses. For one, 43 per cent of men’s and boys’ clothing shops went out of business. Businesses in small town had an especially hard impact due to Wal-Mart, unable to compete against a gigantic cooperation that’s alluring the local customers with a cheap price. As mentioned in “Does Wal-Mart Destroy Communities?” some people argue that everyone except the owners of small stores gained from the cheap price and Wal-Mart’s just providing them with another free choice. However according to research mentioned in “The Price of Pickles”, concluded that ‘the presence of Wal-Mart unequivocally raised family poverty rates in US countries during the 1990s.’ Research stated that while the poverty rates in countries without Wal-Mart decreased from 13.1 per cent to 10.7 per cent, the value in countries with Wal-Mart only fell to 11 per cent. This is not a mere coincidence. It shows the long-term outcome of net harmful effect on communities, cheap prices not able to offset Wal-Mart’s harms. Furthermore, Wal-Mart’s never-ending expansion is slowly but steadily killing the local merchants and businesses all over the United States. Thus, in addition to harm done to its employees all over the world, Wal-Mart results harm to local communities, destroying the local businesses and in long-term, hindering poverty rates from going down which is due to Wal-Mart’s cheap prices that pro-Wal-Mart supporters insist on so much.
With these in mind, let’s go back to the original question: Does Wal-Mart gives out more benefits from its cheap prices than harm? The answer is clear now. There is no doubt that Wal-Mart does more harm than benefits to all the people and society around it. Worldwide, Wal-Mart is extorting labor from its employees with a very low wage, keeping them in the cycle of poverty even though they work 14 hours a day. Locally, Wal-Mart is ruining small shops and businesses. The cheap price that Wal-Mart boasts about proved to be hindering poverty rates from decreasing in long-term. People will still shop at Wal-Mart allured by money saved when they shop there. However, it cannot be denied that Wal-Mart is harmful indeed – a fact that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Works Cited
-Fishman, Charles. “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know.” Fast Company 19 Dec. 2007: 7 – 10. Print.
