{"id":4255,"date":"2010-03-19T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:57","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"be-careful-little-hands-what-you-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2010\/03\/19\/be-careful-little-hands-what-you-type\/","title":{"rendered":"Be careful little hands what you type"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Emily Gastellum<\/p>\n<p>In an age when technological advances occur on what seems like a daily basis, our communication methods have been forced to change. Simple interactions that used to occur face-to-face are now being communicated via text, Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>There is no limit on what can occur using these technologically advanced mediums, and I find it frightening that some people use this technology to deliberately hurt others with their words. This has been assigned the term &#8220;cyber-harassment&#8221; or &#8220;cyberstalking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t familiar with this problem until I saw it occurring within my own network of Facebook friends. One girl was upset about a break-up, and then the angry statuses, notes, messages, etc. began to spread like wildfire. I couldn&#8217;t help but feel bad for the poor guy who was getting publicly called out and decided to look into policies used by social media to prevent these problems.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Facebook, specifically, is a member of the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stopcyberbullying.org\/index2.html\" target=\"_blank\">StopCyberbullying Coalition<\/a>, described on their website as &#8220;a movement to understand, prevent, and address cyberbullying.&#8221; (Although it is termed as &#8220;cyberbullying,&#8221; it is important to note that this specific term is only used when minors are involved in the given situation.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/help\/?safety\" target=\"_blank\">FAQ forum<\/a>s explain how to potentially avoid cyberbullying attacks by:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Accepting friend requests safely<\/li>\n<li>Using the &#8220;block&#8221; feature to stop abusive behavior<\/li>\n<li>Reporting abusive behavior directly to Facebook<\/li>\n<li>Restricting privacy settings<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I found that the main message from both Facebook policies and the StopCyberbullying Coalition was to take preventative measures to avoid extreme situations. Features are available to &#8220;report&#8221; any action on Facebook, which can result in the deleting of accounts, stopping the harassment at the source.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>As Christians we should seek to use our words as a light; I think that we all need to be reminded from time to time that our tongues (or fingers in this case) are most often the source of so much hurt.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Using our Facebook statuses, etc. to tear down others is in no way showing God&#8217;s love or any maturity on your part.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>So let this be a friendly reminder to be careful what you say, because you can never take it back \u2014 especially if it was instantaneously published on a social media site.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.&#8221; Proverbs 21:23<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Emily Gastellum In an age when technological advances occur on what seems like a daily basis, our communication methods have been forced to change. Simple interactions that used&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}