Kiki Kannibal The Girl Who Played With Fire

Do people ever wonder what it was like back when there wasn’t technology? Do they wonder about how different it would be? Does it get annoying when parents and grandparents nag about how much people use the phone? Well, they are right in some ways, society relies on technology to survive. In “Growing up Digital: How the Internet Affects Teen Identity” Chandra Johnson talks about how easy it has become to bully kids over the internet it makes teens want to fake who they are just to be accepted.

Technology is a double edged weapon, but the negative edge is sharper and cuts the reality into pieces, as the children are building and living their behavior and thoughts with whatever they are exposed to using different kinds of technology. One serious impact is the safety and internet privacy of the children. Pamela DeLoatch in her article “The Four Negative Sides of Technology” added that children may unwittingly share information that may endanger their lives. According to her “82% of online sex crimes against children are made using the social networking sites.” According to their excessive use of technology their lives details are open to everybody which sometimes led to undesired acts. It doesn’t have to be sexual abuse but also it may fracture the children’s self-esteem. Self-esteem shapes the way children think of themselves, if a child is popular in his network his self-esteem will be high, and vies versa. Jim Taylor in his article “how technology is changing the way children think and focus” stated similar opinion when he argued that new technologies are shaping the way our children think, adding that researches came with a conclusion that technology can be both harmful and beneficial to ways in which children think. He also said that it is clear that the advancing technology controls how our brains

The story of fourteen year old, Kirsten Ostrenga, is told by Sabrina Rubin Erdely in “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire.” Kirsten was a young teenager, who entered the world that lies within the internet seeking an escape from her lonely life in Coral Springs, Florida. Her online persona, Kiki Kannibal, an audacious and wild tennager, gained a lot of attention for her rather provocative and bold posts. Her life was quickly in shambles. Kiki received threats, sexual messages, and was a victim of sexual assault that ended in a traumatic death. Erdely chose to depict Kiki as a helpless victim of the cruel, online world who had no control over the alarming situation she found herself in.

Social media itself is a huge danger to society. It causes many suicides within the world because of the cyberbullying and spreading of rumors. “Recent studies have shown that one out of four teens have been the victims of cyberbullying and one out of six have admitted to having cyberbullied someone” (Trautner 1). The internet and social media is supposed to be used to communicate with friends and for searching information, “Kids use technology different than their parents do. Sometimes it is hard for adults to understand that this can even be a possibility” (Trautner 1). It is not supposed to be used to bully someone, especially not to the point where the victim would think about suicide. “One of the statistics that has been highlighted within this news coverage is the threefold increase in the suicide rate for girls ages 10 to 14. The rates for girls in this age group increased from 0.5 to 1.5 per 100,000 during this time period. The increases for boys in this age group were not as high, climbing from 1.9 per 100,000 during 1999 to 2.6 per 100,000 in 2014” (Olsen

Technology affects all areas of society, forcing changes in a range of laws. Advances in computer technology have resulted in a new brand of cyber crimes such as computer fraud, computer hacking, email spam, pornography (especially when it relates to children) and stalking online. But it doesn’t just limit itself to computer related crimes. The new wave of digital recording devices create issues with privacy and

Kathy H. as is not reliable as a narrator. Kathy comes across as naïve in some of her narration especially when she is describing what occurred at Hailsham. Kathy was only a child at Hailsham and did not have enough information accurately describe why the students had experienced what they did when she was narrating her experiences at 31 years old. Kathy appears to be nice, but I felt that there was this underlying sense of judgement that came from her narration when describing different events. On page 13, when Tommy stopped and smiled at her because he recognized her, she said that she felt like saying “Tommy, why don’t you grow up.” Kathy thought this instead of saying it aloud because she knew that she was not the type of person to make such comments. Kathy also knows some of what was going on at Hailsham from what

Internet: Lack of Credibility, bad news, has become a big problem for privacy and often used for criminal acts.

Objectification includes the perception that individuals can be treated as objects or tools. For instance, social media like the different social networking sites and other forms of media like commercials, and reality television treat women as objects to be used, for example to sell cars, to advertise different merchandise, even food. In Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played with Fire”, Erdely explains the drawbacks of creating an online image by focusing on the tough and harsh treatment that Kiki faced over the internet. In Rachel Kadish’s article “Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Screaming?” she states her concern in that “there is something dehumanizing in the spectacle of a young man’s face being carried on the wind like dust” as she debates the uncontainable spread of her cousin’s image. Finally, in her article “Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls, and Cha Cha Divas”, Jennifer Pozner reveals the ways in which she thinks reality television stars are manipulated and edited into extremely typecast images in a way that

As a result, Dylan would soon be influenced by his straying curiosity and the dangers of social media. The Internet would soon affect Dylan Klebold’s own actions as he would sometimes punctuate his high fives with german phrases like “Heil Hitler” (18) due to his new “interest” in German and Nazi trends. Eventually, the Internet would influence his thought process as well specifically it would force him to want to make a legendary legacy as a upstander and most importantly a killer. To summarize, the Internet became yet another bully to Dylan Klebold not only abusing him but manipulating him as

Without discretion, Kristen Ostrenga, like many other teenagers, began to release explicit pictures and videos on MySpace. Also, interacting with the people who took notice of her contents. This would of only been possible do to her online persona as “Kiki Kannibal”. With the intention to use the Internet to receive the attention a vast amount of problems were created for her and her family. Kiki Kannibal received the attention she wanted from fans, but also negative attention from other profiles and bullies. In “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played with Fire” Sabrina Rubin Erderly demonstrates the undesired outcomes of when the Internet is used without control or regulation. Peter Singer also has similar views when it comes to different aspects of technology. In “Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets” Singer talks about how technology and privacy affects democracy in government and how it has used technology to spy on its citizens. Tenzin Gyatso shares his opinion about technology in “Ethics and the New Genetics”, and he explains how the vast majority of people does not have the right knowledge to tamper with genetics and genetic science; thus, leads to the misuse of technology. All these texts share a common subject. They talk about how technology, if used incorrectly may lead to negative outcomes. While the Kiki Kannibal text is based from personal experience, both Peter Singer and Tenzin Gyatso essays are opinions, which still demonstrates the circumstance of the

In “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely highlights the dangers involved with an online persona. In the article, Kiki creates an online persona in the hopes of finding friends. She makes a major mistake when she portrays herself as older and more outgoing then she really is. Those mistakes initially led to insults and threats, but eventually led vandalism and rape. The article is a little dated as the dangers involved with an online persona were not as well known. However, there are several lessons from the article that are relevant today. An online persona can be beneficial and enjoyable as long as the creator keeps a few rules in mind. In order for an online persona to be beneficial you must be mature enough to handle criticism and recognize a threat that you should take seriously. Your persona should closely resemble who you really are, and it should enhance a part of your life and not take it over.

Due to lack of prudence Kristen “Kiki” Ostrenga was very lenient with her posts and the people she talked to when it came to her online persona as “Kiki Kannibal”. With the intention to use the internet to receive attention a vast amount of problems were created for her and her family. Kiki Kannibal received the attention she wanted from fans and also negative attention from other profiles and bullies. In “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played with Fire” Sabrina Rubin Erdely demonstrates the undesired outcomes of when the internet is used without there being control or regulation. Peter Singer also has similar views when it comes to different aspects of technology in “Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets” Singer talks about how technology and privacy affects democracy in government and how it is using technology to spy on its citizens. Tenzin Gyatso share his opinion about technology in “Ethics and the New Genetics”, and he explains how the vast majority of people do not have the right knowledge to tamper with genetics and genetical science; thus, leading to the misuse of technology. All these texts share a common subject which is that they talk about how if technology is not used correctly it may lead to negative outcomes. While the Kiki Kannibal text is based from personal experience, both Peter Singer and Tenzin Gyatso essays are opinions that still demonstrates the circumstance of the misuse of technology. With the abuse of

In this article the author discusses about the harmful actives that the internet dose to the youth. With two main points; cyber bullying and sexting, the author briefly discusses what they are and what threat that occurs from them. The article is useful to me because it shows the harmfulness on what could happen on the internet. However, this article is very vague and lakes a certain amount of information to achieve its point.

In today’s world, we are all in some way connected to or involved with the internet. We all use different services that we feel either enrich our lives or make them more enjoyable every day, from email to FaceBook, MySpace, and e-commerce. We all take a sort of false comfort in the basic anonymity of the internet; however, when we think about it, that could end up being the single biggest risk to our own safety today. When we typically think of crimes committed against us, we could probably name several: mugging, theft, scams, murder, and rape. For these, things we all take as many necessary steps as we can to help lower the chances of them happening to us because they are on the forefront of our minds. However, most of us don’t take the