Smartphone Culture

Smartphone had changed our daily life.

Most of us rely on smartphone for daily routine.

Let's see how smartphone affects our life.

Games and Gaming (virtual world and real world)

       Major advancements of technology have changed our culture and lifestyle in many aspects. Video games, for instance, have become global entertainment today which especially popular among the teenagers. Video games are internally diverse as it involve the using of consoles (eg: PS3 and XBOX) and handheld devices (eg: smartphone and personal computer). The broadly development of video games are not simply a games for entertainment, but also an opportunity for games industries to expand their business and make money.

       According to NIKO media research, the statistic of PC online gamers in Malaysia are increase from 7.62 million in 2012 to 9.9 million in 2014 (Figure 1). This indicates the growth of video games is significantly important. Refers to statistic of PC online gamers. 

Figure 1

      Do video games help in real world? In fact, video games are close to our reality but do not mean that it is helpful in real life. For instance, “The Sims” is a game that instructed by players to interact with others and achieve daily needs such as eating, build house, purchasing items and lots (Figure 2). Playing video games are undeniably brings to enjoyment and happiness. However, video games are provided virtual world but not the real world that we should focus on.

      

There are several factors boost the growing of video games. In particular, video games play actually provides cognitive, motivational, emotional and social benefits. In the cognitive dimension, video games able to strengthen the cognitive skills of players such as attention allocation, spatial navigation, reasoning and memory. A good example can be shown through shooter video games (Figure 3), which often violent in nature. The shooter video games tend to improve the thinking capability of players in more dimensions and enhance their mental rotation abilities. Also, video games are helping in emotional because children can learn emotional resilience through the failure in games. On the other hand, it connects the gamers to become virtual social communities and encourage cooperation among gamers to help each other.

Figure 2: "The Sims"

Figure 3: Shooter video games

Nevertheless, excessive gaming will lead to negative impacts which are violence, addiction and depression. An excessive attention of players on the games will cause players forget about the time and abandon their real life. Following, it will bring to many negative outcomes such as health problems, suffering relationships, increased aggression and poor performance. In the earlier of January of 2015, a 32-year old male gamer was found dead at Taiwanese Internet Café because non-stop three days gaming session. Later, another death case happened at Taipei because of five days gaming binge. What turns a hobby into health hazard (refers to gaming to death) ? 

Gaming is for fun and to spending spare time. It does not necessary to harmful our life because of playing game. Do differentiate the real world and virtual world!!!!

Blog

     A blog has been evolved from online diary, where people will update their personal lives online. In this modern era, there are varies of blog like travel, fashion, happiness, health and others. People will update their blog based on some specific issue, for example travel blogger will update their travel experience, share how their feeling and experience that they faced during their trip.

     20 years ago, blog does not exist but now there are millions of blog that we can find it online. Blogging not only a platform for someone to express themselves, but it also have others benefits. One of the benefits of blogging is that you can gain influence. A successful blogger gains people who trust and respect them. Those, in this day we can see that many famous blogger actually is sponsored or hired by certain business people to help them promote their product. This is because, audiences are more easily influence by their idol rather than normal salesman that try to approach them and sell them a product.  

     Here are a travel blogger that I liked: http://www.adventurouskate.com/. She quit her job and decided to travel alone to the world at the age of 26. The spirit and courage make me admired her.  She spent six months in Southeast Asia and turned her travel blog into a full-time business.

"I believe that it’s best to teach by example, and my ultimate goal is to show women that independent and solo travel can be safe, easy, and a lot of fun." 

     I like her blog because she not only shared her experience but she also gave her's reader some advices about how to travel safe.  She proved to all women that it is possible for a woman to have a dream, travel alone the world and make new friends in every destination. Do you have any blogger that you like too?

The impacts of social media on society

Society nowadays are known as digital natives which are born after the digital technology being introduced and surrounded by digital environment in using cell phones, computer. Social media websites are categorized as one of the most popular haunts on the Internet. Social media had changed the way people communicate and socialize on the website.

Social media or specifically social networking sites are affecting every group of people. For children, it may impacts their growing period, their childhood and increase the distance with their parents. For teenagers or students, their academic performance will be affected through the addiction use of SNS. The introduction of SNS has directly changed the academic environment of the students nowadays. It is being concluded that SNS did affected negatively to people in all range of age.

The distance between parents, friends, colleagues, lecturer-students and employer-employee are getting large with the presence of SNS. People tend to less in communicating face to face while more to engaging with devices and laptops in their daily life. Study has shown that families are spending lesser time with one another which from 32% of communication within family members in 2000 to 8% in 2012. Furthermore, during friends and schoolmates gathering, they were texting or on social media sites instead of communicating with each other.

One of the most affected social networking sites towards society in our country nowadays probably will be Facebook. The top social networking sites that Malaysians were found visited most was Facebook. Facebook is a social media which has been widely used by people from young to old age in this 21^st century. Facebook indeed has changed the way of people communicate, the way they interact with each other and even changed the way they think.

Facebook indeed provide us to stay connected with old friends and friends who far from other country but it make us abandoned our friends which are just besides and surrounding us. They connected to the person in electronic devices rather than the person who just sit next to them. They even isolating themselves from the reality and live in the world of social media.

                

It is very obvious that Facebook is a significant social networking site and it brings more harm for the people of all age in Malaysia. Whether this change was for the better or for the worse depends on how you look at it and how you handle it. We have to find the right balance in the use of social media in our daily life. The Use of Facebook positively to share your thoughts and keeping yourself aware of the surroundings are encouraged, but don’t cross the safe distance.

LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender)

LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender)

     Setiap perkara yang disiarkan di laman sesawang khususnya dalam blog adalah mempunyai motif yang tersendiri. Sehubungan dengan itu, setiap fakta dan isu yang dibangkitkan dalam media sosial turut mempunyai motif yang tersendiri. Malah idea-idea yang disiarkan tersebut berdasarkan ideologi-ideologi tertentu. Contoh isu yang biasa dibangkitkan adalah seperti pergerakan kumpulan wanita, kumpulan gay dan lesbian, kumpulan agama dan kumpulan sesebuah etnik.

     Isu Lesbian, Gay, Biseksual and Transgender (LGBT) merupakan salah satu isu hangat yang dibangkitkan oleh kumpulan gay dan lesbian dalam laman sesawang. LGBT Community Center National History Archive mula diperkenalkan oleh seorang sukarelawan juru arkib iaitu Rich Wandel pada tahun 1990. https://gaycenter.org/about/history

   

                                            wanita dalam pakaian bercampuran jantina - c. 1920

  

pasangan lesbian - c. 1970s.

Medium yang digunakan?

     Menurut blog yang saya baca, LGBT semakin kuat menerima sokongan daripada lapisan masyarakat terutamanya di Negara Barat seperti Amerika dan New Zealand. Selain itu, mereka juga mempunyai pusat pergerakan sendiri iaitu Support the Center LGBT Community yang ditubuhkan pada 1983. Golongan LGBT telah menggunakan berberapa medium untuk menarik perhatian orang ramai dan menperjuangkan hak-hak mereka. Media sosial seperti blog dan Facebook merupakan salah satu medium utama yang digunakan oleh golongan LGBT untuk menyebarkan idelogi mereka. http://www.suarakita.org/2015/02/propaganda-anti-lgbt-di-malaysia/.

                                    sekolah Japan yang menjalankan kempen LGBT 

                                                                      

Pusat LBGT yang menyokong sentimen LBGT di Amerika

                                                                

Puak-puak yang menyokong golongan LGBT.

 

                         Antara program yang dipaparkan untuk memperjuangkan hak LGBT.

     Isu LGBT menjadi bualan hangat dalam kalangan masyarakat sama ada di dalam atau luar negara, termasuk juga di Malaysia. Walaupun golongan ini merupakan golongan minoriti namun pergerakan mereka dalam menyebarkan isu ini amat kuat mempengaruhi fikiran masyarakat. Jumlah pengikut pergerakan LGBT juga semakin ramai dan mereka berjaya mendapat perhatian seluruh dunia.

     Sejak sekian lama isu LGBT mendapat tentangan  daripada pelbagai lapisan masyarakat kerana ia dianggap sebagai satu amalan yang bertentangan dengan nilai-nilai agama. Namun golongan ini sangat bijak, mereka telah menggunakan hak-hak asasi manusia untuk menjadi pelindung utama mereka dalam mengembangkan isu ini. Walaupun pergerakan LGBT menggunakan hak-hak asasi manusia untuk memperjuangkan hak samarata dalam masyarakat telah diterima di Negara Barat seperti Amerika dan New Zealand, namun negara lain seperti Malaysia di mana agama Islam merupakan agama rasmi di Malaysia masih mendapatkan tentangan yang kuat. Contohnya berita yang disiarkan dalam MalaysiaKini, isu LBGT mendapat tentangan hebat dari anti-LGBT. Mereka berpendapat bahawa isu homoseksual adalah tidak toleran dan bertentangan dengan ajaran Islam. http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/180608. Bagi mereka, seorang umat Islam haruslah menjauhi amalan homoseksual kerana larangana amalan ini termaktub dalam Al-Qur’an. 

The Negative Effect of New Media: Dating and Romance Scam.

      It is clear to say, people can construct or build a totally different identity through the internet. The problem arisen, people were misused the internet. There is too much cases reported for dating and romance scam while it happened all over the world.

      What is dating and romance scam? The scammers plays on emotional triggers that lower the defences by appealing to the victims romantic and compassionate side. Normally, the scammer will request the victims to provide them money, gifts and also their personal details. At first, the scammers will target the victims by creating fake profiles on the social websites such as facebook, instagram, twitter and wechat or even some dating websites. Once they start contact with the victims, they will express strong emotion on them and creating a romantic lovestory while making them believes they are the true love. If the scammers are in other country, they will start to pretend that they wanted to go visit the victims and ready to book a flight for meet up. All of this was coax with delusive promises.  Time by time, they gained trust from the victims and they will have plenty of reason to ask for money, gifts and personal details.

sugar-coated truth.....

      Their great story would be they were claim to be the depths of despair due to financial problem or ill family member. Alternatively, they might also claim to get serious sickness such as cancer or accident, then, they will ask the victims to pay for their bills. The victims always feel sympathy and started to sent them money. The stories was old but still lots of people being trapped.

At the end, the victims will end up losing alot of money. That is always impossible to claim back all the money from the scammers and other than that, the victims would feel the long lasting emotional betrayal at the situation of someone you thought loved you and so called “true love” and trustworthy.

      Not only women being cheat, while men also always cheated by the scammers. The victims range have no different in gender, profesional, educational level and social status. There is a news in Malaysia during 2014 regarding a female doctor loses RM1.5 millions to a Casanova scam( Doctor loses RM1.5 millions to internet scam.). She was first love bombed with a purported American Allen J.Ackermann. the reason why she felt into the trap was the men she met through a dating agency said everything she wanted and needed to hear. 

this is a true story about dating scam. can have a look ...

                           

This are the tips to prevent being tricked by internet scammers

Lastly, Be Smart & Protect Yourself.