Campaña sobre el uso seguro de Internet

Con un portal web, una campaña radial y seminarios para padres y apoderados en todas las regiones del país, el Ministerio de Educación a través de Enlaces, busca crear conciencia sobre los riesgos y potencialidades de Internet. La iniciativa se enmarca en el Programa Escuela Segura.

Lo que se sube a Internet es como una huella imborrable: siempre queda una marca ya sea de la foto, el video o de lo que se escribe. Los adultos deben conversar con los niños sobre los peligros que existen en la red, igual como les enseñan a cruzar la calle o a no hablar con extraños. Este y otros temas son desarrollados en los seminarios “Ser Familia en la Era Digital”, iniciativa que tiene como objetivo orientar a los padres, apoderados y profesores sobre los riesgos y potencialidades de Internet, brindándoles la posibilidad de que asuman un rol de mediadores activos y “guías digitales” de sus hijos y alumnos en la navegación por la red.

Son 33 seminarios que se están realizando en todas las regiones del país. Enlaces invitó a participar en esta actividad a dos instituciones: Policía de Investigaciones (PDI) y Fundación Queveo, con el objetivo de entregar una mirada desde el tema legal y criminal y desde la sociedad civil.

En forma complementaria, se estrenó el portal www.internetsegura.cl, el cual entrega datos sobre buscadores infantiles, vínculos a sitios de estudio como www.yoestudio.cl, consejos para que niños y adolescentes hagan un uso seguro y responsable de esta tecnología y padres y profesores sepan cómo orientarlos en relación a este tema. Cuenta con distintos perfiles de acuerdo a las necesidades de cada usuario y reúne información propia del Ministerio y de distintos países e instituciones sobre el uso seguro de Internet.

Adicionalmente, desde el sitio Internet Segura se puede acceder al de los seminarios “Ser Familia en la Era Digital”, donde hay información sobre el calendario nacional y los videos de las presentaciones.

Otra estrategia para crear conciencia sobre este tema es la realización de una campaña que actualmente se está emitiendo en varias radios naciones y regionales.

Todo lo anterior se enmarca dentro del Programa Escuela Segura, que busca fortalecer en todos los colegios del país, las medidas para prevenir y proteger a los estudiantes, de todo tipo de riesgos.

Facebook no se extiende por contagio social

E. Martínez. Psicología de la Información. Abril/2012.

¿Por qué nos decidimos a darnos de alta en una red social? La respuesta más popular a esta pregunta suele ser que existe un efecto contagio, semejante al que se produce en la transmisión de enfermedades: cuantas más personas en mi entorno utilicen una red social, más probable es que acabe utilizando dicha red social.

Facebook es actualmente el arquetipo de red social, y el fenómeno del contagio es la respuesta que más frecuentemente se invoca para explicar su difusión mundial. Pero puede que la cosa no sea tan simple. Un equipo de investigadores de la Cornell University ha publicado un estudio en PNAS donde muestran que es más probable que los usuarios se suscriban a Facebook si reciben invitaciones de contactos de grupos diversos que si reciben muchas invitaciones de miembros del mismo grupo.

La metodología es simple. Facebook proporciona una herramienta para enviar emails a los contactos de nuestra libreta de direcciones para invitarles a unirse a la red social. Esas invitaciones contienen un perfil de la persona que nos invita y una lista de otros contactos del remitente ya presentes en la red.

Los investigadores analizaron 54 millones de invitaciones por email, y observaron la emergencia de un patrón que contradice el contagio social: las personas no se unen a Facebook dependiendo del número absoluto de invitaciones que reciban, sino en función de cuantos grupos diferentes de contactos estén presentes en las invitaciones.

El equipo además investigó la vinculación (engagement) de los usuarios que se registraron en Facebook durante el año 2010, definiendo esa vinculación como el uso de la plataforma en al menos 6 días por semana durante los 3 primeros meses después del registro. Y hallaron un resultado semejante al anterior: los nuevos miembros de Facebook cuyos 20 primeros amigos pertenecían a distintos grupos tenían más probabilidades de vincularse a Facebook que aquellos cuyos 20 primeros amigos pertenecían al mismo grupo.

¿Qué explica estos resultados? Aunque los autores del estudio no aventuran ninguna hipótesis, sí lo hace James Fowler (uno de los autores de la popular obra sobre las redes sociales Conectados) en la reseña del estudio en Science Now. Fowler baraja dos hipótesis:

En primer lugar, podría ser que uno de los diversos grupos fuera el decisivo a la hora de animar a las personas a inscribirse en Facebook. En palabras de Fowler:

Maybe you don’t care at all about whether your friends from high school are on Facebook, but when you see someone from your jujitsu club, that makes the difference.

En segundo lugar, también podría suceder que tener más grupos diferentes de amigos utilizando Facebook incremente la presión grupal para utilizar la plataforma.

En cualquier caso, si como dice el estudio lo que importa es el grupo en concreto, y no el número de contactos, creo que estamos ante un nuevo resultado que muestra la preeminencia de la homofilia en las dinámicas de conexión en las redes sociales.

Facebook's Dark Side

Facebook's Dark Side

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2012) — When Darth Vader was introduced as the dark side of the Force in the first installment of the original trilogy, "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" (1977), Christopher Carpenter, the 30-year old assistant professor of communication at Western Illinois University, was not yet born.

Now, Carpenter is getting worldwide news coverage for his study of the "dark side," but on the timely subject of Facebook.

Carpenter's study, "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior," is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Narcissism is defined in this study as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and an exaggerated sense of self-importance," Carpenter said.

For the average narcissist, Facebook "offers a gateway for hundreds of shallow relationships and emotionally detached communication." More importantly, for this study, social networking in general allows the user a great deal of control over how he or she is presented to and perceived by peers and other users, he added.

The narcissistic personality inventory (NPI) survey sample included 292 individuals, which measured self-promoting Facebook behaviors, such as posting status updates, photos of oneself and updating profile information; and several anti-social behaviors, including seeking social support more than providing it, getting angry when others do not comment on status updates and retaliating against negative comments.

Carpenter's research methods class emailed people they knew and asked them to complete the survey. Approximately 75 percent of respondents were college students, he said.

He hypothesized the grandiose exhibitionism (GE) subscale of the NPI would predict the self-promoting behaviors. The entitlement/exploitativeness (EE) subscale was hypothesized to predict the anti-social behaviors. GE includes vanity, superiority, self-absorption and exhibitionistic tendencies. EE includes a sense of deserving respect and a willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others, Carpenter explained.

Results showed grandiose exhibitionism correlated with self-promotion and entitlement/exploitativeness correlated with anti-social behaviors on Facebook. Self-esteem was unrelated to self-promotion behaviors and it was negatively associated with some anti-social behaviors (i.e. self-esteem was related to less of these anti-social behaviors).

"If Facebook is to be a place where people go to repair their damaged ego and seek social support, it is vitally important to discover the potentially negative communication one might find on Facebook and the kinds of people likely to engage in them. Ideally, people will engage in pro-social Facebooking rather than anti-social me-booking.

"In general, the 'dark side' of Facebook requires more research in order to better understand Facebook's socially beneficial and harmful aspects in order to enhance the former and curtail the latter," added Carpenter, who joined the Western Illinois University communication department in Fall 2010.

¿Pasar horas en Facebook puede ayudar a los niños a ser más empáticos?

Por Shirley S. Wang. The Wall Street Journal Américas. Enero 2012.

En medio del mar de mensajes que los estudiantes universitarios escriben en sus páginas de Facebook, los sociólogos ven algo más: El tiempo que se pasa en línea podría ayudar a la gente a aprender a ser más empáticos y hacer más amigos en la vida real.

Cada vez más estudios indican que el uso generalizado de los mensajes de texto, correo electrónico y las redes sociales tiene beneficios sociales. Estos estudios disputan la imagen de los jóvenes sentados solos frente a su computadora o siendo acosados en Internet.

Varias investigaciones recientes han revelado que la comunicación digital puede llevar a más o mejores amistades en línea y fuera de Internet, mayor franqueza, más rápida intimidad en las relaciones y creciente sentimiento de pertenencia, además de las ventajas prácticas como ampliar el círculo de contactos.

En general, la tecnología parece mejorar las relaciones en el mundo real, dice Nancy Baym, profesora de Estudios de Comunicación en la Universidad de Kansas en Lawrence. Una razón es que la gente utiliza la comunicación digital en un principio para interactuar con personas que son cercanas fuera de Internet, no con extraños. La comunicación estrecha los vínculos entre ellos, descubrieron la Dra. Baym y sus colegas en un estudio publicado en la revista Information, Communication & Society en 2009.

Algunos estudios muestran que esta forma de relacionarse en Internet podría ayudar en particular a la gente tímida o ansiosa en entornos sociales. Estos investigadores se centraron en el impacto psicológico de una intensiva comunicación social en Internet, no en la función que tiene en las reuniones públicas.

En un estudio de la Universidad de Nueva York, los estudiantes se calificaron a sí mismos como socialmente ansiosos o no ansiosos, los participantes fueron asignados al azar a interactuar en grupos de tres de personas, tanto en persona o en una sala de chat por Internet. Los estudiantes ansiosos informaron de mayor timidez e incomodidad que los no ansiosos en los grupos cara a cara. En la sala de chat, sin embargo, dijeron que se sintieron menos timidez, más cómodos y mejor aceptados por sus pares.

En un estudio de seguimiento, los investigadores dividieron de nuevo al azar a estudiantes con baja y alta ansiedad en grupos de cuatro personas para que interactuasen de nuevo en la sala de chat y cara a cara. Los participantes socialmente ansiosos tenían más probabilidad de tomar decisiones y liderar el grupo cuando estaban en la sala de chat que cara a cara con otras personas. Otros miembros del grupo dijeron que los participantes ansiosos les resultaban más agradables y extrovertidos cuando la relación ocurría en línea. Cara a cara, los participantes no ansiosos eran considerados los líderes.

La comunicación frecuente en Internet podría servir para practicar las interacciones sociales en persona, según Larry Rosen, profesor de Psicología de la Universidad del Estado de California en Domínguez Hills.

El Dr. Rosen y su equipo tenían especial curiosidad sobre la empatía, porque muy frecuentemente se comunica de forma no verbal a través de las expresiones de la cara y el leguaje corporal. De manera informal, los investigadores escanearon docenas de perfiles en Facebook, en busca de comentarios que hacían personas y las respuestas a ellos que parecían mostrar comprensión de los sentimientos del autor original del comentario, como mensajes de apoyo a un amigo que decía que su madre sería operada al día siguiente.

Estos mensajes sugirieron que la empatía en verdad se podía reconocer y comunicar a través del lenguaje escrito y en Internet. Esto inspiró a los investigadores a estudiar cómo la misma circunstancia afecta la expresión de empatía en la vida real.

En un estudio presentado a principios de este mes en la conferencia anual de la Asociación Psicológica Estadounidense (APA, por sus siglas en inglés) en Washington, se preguntó a 1.283 personas de 18 a 30 años en una serie de cuestionarios cuánto tiempo pasaban en Internet, y el grado de empatía con los amigos en línea y fuera de Internet.

A partir de las respuestas, se descubrió que cuánto más tiempo pasaban los estudiantes en Facebook, más empatía tenían en Internet y fuera de la Red.

Como sucede en cualquier investigación reciente, estos hallazgos preliminares deben ser repetidos en estudios futuros, especialmente porque los datos entregados voluntariamente pueden modificarse si los participantes recuerdan erróneamente sus sentimientos.

Por otra parte, algunos de los aspectos negativos de la comunicación en línea podrían no estar tan extendidos como se teme, según investigaciones. Aunque el abuso, o matoneo en línea es una preocupación, el matoneo en persona es mucho más común.

En un estudio de 3.777 adolescentes, casi 45% de ellos informaron de algún grado de acoso escolar en el pasado año. De éstos, casi 40% dijo que fue en persona. Menos del 20% indicó que había ocurrido –solamente o además de otros métodos de acoso– en línea, por teléfono o mensaje de texto, dice Michele Ybarra, presidenta del grupo de investigación sin ánimo de lucro Internet Solutions for Kids Inc., que hizo el sondeo. Además, dos tercios de los niños que dicen haber sufrido acoso escolar en línea dijeron que no les resultó molesto, según un nuevo estudio de la Dra. Ybarra que espera será publicado pronto en la revista Pediatrics.

Y los jóvenes todavía tienen mucha más probabilidad de ver imágenes con contenido sexual o violencia en la televisión que en línea, dice Ybarra.

Social Media Users In Love: Romance Update [INFOGRAPHIC]

 by Charlie White. Mashable.

How do you meet people you’d like to get to know better? How do you treat each other once you’re together? Social media turns out to be a great accelerator for exposing you to potential mates, but does that change the basic way people interact with each other?

The infographic and research experts at Lab42 set out to take the pulse of today’s relationship hunters as well as established lovers, conducting a survey between Oct. 27 and Oct. 30 where they asked 500 social network users over age 18 some rather personal questions about meeting people, cheating, communication and more.

Is your romantic life similar to that of most other social networkers, or do you play the game your own way? Find out by checking out the fresh results of this infographic:

Click to see full size.

The Benefit and Danger of Education Technology

The Benefit and Danger of Education Technology

by Rafael Scapin on NOVEMBER 4, 2011 in DAWSONITE, EDTECH

This is the second in a series on the digital divide that exists in the world of education. Each article is by an Edudemic guest author. Want to weigh in? Click here to get your article published. Read Jill Rooney’s article “Education, Race and the Internet: Digital Divide or Racial Ravine?“

The rapid changes in technology over the last 75 years have created enormous opportunities for education. While some technologies such as the computer were adopted early on, a reluctance to embrace change coupled with a lack of funding has resulted in a continuing dependence on chalkboards and other anachronistic technologies. The extent to which schools adopt new technologies, not surprisingly, often depends on how well they’re funded. It isn’t uncommon for schools that are separated by very little physical distance to be at opposite ends of the technology gap.

Many folks familiar with this scenario understand the inherent lack of fairness in the disparate funding of schools. What many people don’t understand however is that it also threatens the uniquely American ideals of democracy and equality. One of the bedrocks of our democracy is the idea that we’re governed by the electoral choices of a well-informed citizenry. Having equal access to a decent education is the assumption that underlies this premise. But the ways in which rapid advances in technology are adopted have both positive and negative implications for schools and for broader society in general.

Preparing For The Workforce

One of the most positive results of schools embracing new technologies is found when low-income students gain skills they otherwise wouldn’t. The ability to type, use email and execute basic computer functions like Word and Excel are imperative in today’s workforce. When students who have no access to computers at home learn these skills specifically because of technology in the classroom, they have a far greater chance of moving from have-nots to haves in the future. Having technological competence gives them a better chance of success in the workforce and gives them a greater ability and confidence to pursue online education university options.

No Student Left Behind

When classrooms adopt iPads or other tablets in lower grades amongst younger students, the possibility that those students will be left behind in terms of the greater society decreases dramatically. Studies have consistently shown that new technology introduction to younger children provides better results than when introduced at a later age. Even if low-income students have no access to computers at home, the integration of new technology into all aspects of school life ensures that they have greater opportunities going forward.

Handwriting Requirements

There are some arguably negative implications to the adoption of new technologies as well. Some of the most evident for the short term involve dropping long-standing handwriting requirements. Penmanship was dropped from most English classes over the last twenty years and cursive writing requirements are quickly being cut from many programs as well. Depending on one’s perspective, not learning cursive in elementary school may not be the end of the world academically speaking. But advocates of teaching cursive argue that losing cursive is just one more case of technology eroding academic rigor.

Quality of Writing

There is another, lesser known, but reasonable argument against adopting computers across all academic disciplines. Pen and paper often tend to be more conducive to good writing than computer keyboarding. Longhand writing is more likely to result in well-reasoned, nuanced and intricate prose. This may arise from the fact that typing lends itself more easily to abrupt and punchy prose. The staccato quality of typing can work its way into writing. Stylistic arguments aside; a potentially far more worrisome implication for the long term is the increasing technology gap among schools.

Social Class

When the only technology requirements for completing aprimary education involved paper, pencils, a slide rule and eventually calculators, the impact technology had in widening the divide between haves and have-nots was minimal. But the technology gap which exists in schools today also functions as a solidifier of social class. If low-income students are unlucky enough to attend schools which can’t fund technology purchases, the chance that they’ll find a way out of a low income life becomes less likely. It’s understandable that if a school can’t afford air conditioning, they’re probably not going to view iPads as a logical expenditure.

The Danger of Making Technology So Critical

The ability to use technologies such as laptops and tablet computers allows students to acquire the same sets of core competencies they’ll need in the workforce. Not acquiring these skill sets is more than an inconvenience. The ability to access information and basic computer literacy can function as a potential stepping-stone out of poverty for many students. If a student graduates high school without at least a rudimentary and working knowledge of new technologies, their future starts looking a lot less bright.

And since many school districts which can’t afford to incorporate technology into the classroom are largely found in less affluent areas, the likelihood of upward social mobility decreases significantly and social classes begin to look a lot more like social castes. The technology gap runs the risk of further cementing social class. This country has always celebrated the ability of Americans to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. We love it when the underdog makes good. It’s part of our national identity to root for the little guy. But when the little guy is deprived of what are rapidly becoming basic tools of future economic survival, the ability for any effective bootstrap pulling begins to disappear.

Technology’s Impact on the Future

Twenty years ago, someone without computer skills could still expect to find a decent job which, though not providing a huge income, could still support a family. But now, jobs that used to be considered basic blue collar jobs require technological know-how. A car mechanic used to need mechanical aptitude and a good set of wrenches and they were in business. Working in customer service used to require basic telephone skills. But increasingly, even menial entry level jobs require much more computer literacy than what some disadvantaged students are getting in schools. If we want to ensure that more Americans continue to get a legitimate shot at the American Dream, we need to start a national dialogue focused on identifying workable solutions for narrowing the technology gap.

Jesse L. is a recent college graduate looking to make his mark on the world. Currently he is a blogger and a contributor at the Professional Intern. You can follow the Professional Intern on Twitter @TheProIntern. Be sure to check out his most recent article “How Steve Jobs Impacted Education.”

World on Wi-Fire by Nial Ferguson

World on Wi-Fire

By Niall Ferguson. Newsweek. Oct 3, 2011 1:00 AM EDT

Feel the chaos? Technology is feeding mind-boggling volatility everywhere.

The human race is interconnected as never before. Is that a good thing? Ask the Lords of the Internet—the men running the companies Eric Schmidt of Google recently called “the Four Horsemen”: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—and you’ll get an unequivocal “yes.” But is it true? In view of the extraordinary economic and political instability of recent months, it’s worth asking if the Netlords are the Four Horsemen of a new kind of information apocalypse.

Don’t get me wrong. I love all that these companies have achieved. I order practically everything except haircuts from Amazon. I write this column on a MacBook Pro. I communicate with my kids via Facebook. It’s 6:55 a.m., and I’ve already run six searches on Google. Did I forget to mention that I’ve already received 29 emails and sent 14?

I also really like the Netlords. They are among the smartest guys on the planet. Yet they are also self-deprecating and sometimes very funny. (OK, not Steve Jobs.) So my question for them is a real question, not some kind of Luddite rant: does the incredible network you have created, with its unprecedented scale and speed, not contain a vulnerability? I’m not talking here about the danger of its exploitation by Islamist extremists or its incapacitation by Chinese cyberwarriors, though I worry about those things too. No, I mean the possibility that the global computer network formed by technologically unified human minds is inherently unstable—and that it is ushering in an era of intolerable volatility.

The communications revolution we are living through has been driven by two great forces. One is Gordon E. Moore’s “law” (which he first proposed in 1965) that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 months. In its simplified form, Moore’s Law says that computing power will double every two years, implying a roughly 30-fold increase in 10 years. This exponential trend has now continued for more than half a century and is expected by the techies to continue until at least 2015 or 2020.

The other force is the exponential growth of human networks. The first email was sent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the same year Moore’s Law was born. In 2006 people sent 50 billion emails; last year it was 300 billion. The Internet was born in 1982. As recently as 1993 only 1 percent of two-way telecommunication went through it. By 2000 it was 51 percent. Now it’s 97 percent. Facebook was dreamed up by an über-nerd at my university in 2004. It has 800 million active users today—eight times the number of three years ago.

Illustration by Oliver Munday

Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner sees this trend as our friend (it has certainly been his). As the number of people online doubles from 2 billion to 4 billion over the next 10 years and the number of Internet-linked devices quadruples from 5 billion to 20 billion, mankind collectively gets more knowledge—and gets smarter. Speaking at a conference in Ukraine in mid-September, Milner asserted that data equivalent to the total volume of information created from the beginning of human civilization until 2003 can now be generated in the space of just two days. To cope with this information overload, he looks forward to “the emergence of the global brain, which consists of all the humans connected to each other and to the machine and interacting in a very unique and profound way, creating an intelligence that does not belong to any single human being or computer.”

In the future as imagined by Google, this global brain will do much of our thinking for us, telling us (through our handheld devices) which of our friends is just around the next corner and where we can buy that new suit we need for the best price. And if the best price is on Amazon, we’ll just click once and look forward to its next-day delivery. Maybe it’ll already be there when we get home.

That’s the kind of sci-fi scenario that gets a true nerd out of bed in the morning. But is it just a bit too utopian?

Computer networks combine and amplify the primeval emotions of fear, love, and hate.

Exhibit one for a contrarian view is the recent behavior of global financial markets, the area of human activity furthest down the road of computerization and automation. According to math wonk Kevin Slavin, algorithms with names like the “Boston Shuffler” are the new masters of the financial universe. Whole tower blocks have been hollowed out to accommodate the computing power required by high-frequency (and very high-speed) trading. So how is this brave new world of robot traders doing?

Well, the VIX index of volatility—Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, which infers the expected volatility of the U.S. stock market from options prices—reached an all-time high of 80 in the aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ failure and surged back up above 30 in early 2010 and again this summer. Part of this is just a good old-fashioned, man-made financial crisis, of course. But some of the volatility we’ve seen in the past four years is surely attributable to technology: think only of the “flash crash” of May 6 last year, when the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 9 percent and then rallied in a matter of minutes.

Could the same kind of volatility spread into other markets as these become as wired and as integrated as Planet Finance? The answer must be yes. Consider how Greece’s fiscal woes have destabilized markets across Europe and around the world in recent months. Then there’s the market for consumer durables. We know that the speed with which new technologies have been adopted by American households has increased around eightfold over the past hundred years. But that speed of adoption has its obverse in the speed of obsolescence. Consumers are becoming ever more fickle. Millions bought RIM’s BlackBerry after its advent in 1999. But today the iPhone is the hotter handheld device, and I am far from alone in having a dead BlackBerry in my bottom desk drawer. In late September Amazon launched the Kindle Fire in a bid to challenge the iPad’s dominance of the tablet market. The name is appropriate. The market for such devices is on fire. The whole world is on wi-fire.

In politics, too, online electorates are becoming more volatile. The current race to find a Republican candidate for the presidency is a case in point. Only the other day Sarah Palin was a serious contender. Then Mitt Romney was a shoe-in. Until Rick Perry came along. Until Chris Christie came along. Meanwhile, the number of independent voters who have uncoupled themselves from the traditional parties has reached a historic high of 37 percent. Floating voters are the high-frequency traders of the political market.

Computing power has grown exponentially. So has the human network. But the brain of Homo sapiens remains pretty much the same organ that evolved in the heads of African hunter-gatherers 200,000 years ago. And that brain has a tendency to swing in its mood, from greed to fear and from love to hate.

The reality may be that by joining us all together and deluging us with data, the Netlords have ushered in a new Age of Volatility, in which our primeval emotions are combined and amplified as never before.

We are LinkedIn, but StressedOut. And that “cloud” of downloadable data may yet turn out to be a thundercloud.

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, will be published in November.