Logical Fallacy!

Logical fallacies are more common than we might think. They are present everywhere in the media and are unknowingly used by people proposing their arguments and attempting to persuade another to agree or join their cause.

This is a comic about several kinds of fallacies often encountered in real life.

Now that we have an idea as to what a logical fallacy could look like, I present my own. The name has been censored and while I know this is a delicate topic, I believe strongly that this is a logical fallacy as well, found on a Facebook post.

This person believes that they can back up their beliefs by picking a certain passage of the bible, but their mistake is in that the bible also says that ...

...Among other things, such as we will not mix cotton with any other materials in our clothes and that divorce constitutes the execution or stoning of the wife.

Solving the problem: A Proposal a.k.a Blog 7

The problem at hand is that kids nowadays are desensitized to a lot of things, such as violence and victims of violence. They lack tact and proper social skills. They don't seem to understand that saying "No offense but.." does not give them the green light to say whatever they want. Children who play video games, surf the web, watch television, or text excessively are all going to suffer in one way or another. Whether it be by suffering in the realm of social situations, not learning how to survive on their own, or even putting themselves in situations beyond their times (Like sex, which leads to unwanted pregnancy.)

To combat these problems, I propose three ideas that might be able to remedy the issue at hand.

1. Parents should be informed on the consequences of excessive use of recreational technology so that they may better intervene and limit the amount of time spent on phones or video games.
Most parents allow their kids to do as they please because it keeps them out of their hair. The consequences of children with limited morality and sensitivity also rests on them. If a parent limits the amount of time spent with technology, they could encourage their child to do more productive things or spend time with the family. The cons of this proposal is that technology is so readily available and considered so necessary to daily life that it might be hard to put a limit on how much time is spent around recreational technology.
The appeal of this solution is that it encourages positive activities and productivity if a parent goes far enough to enforce such things.
The people who I see might object to this solution are children and adolescents who have become attached or even addicted to their live's with their phones and other electronics. Parents might also object to this because the attachment to electronics does not only affect their children but them as well. Some parents might also be unwilling to make time to enjoy quality time with family that does not involve sitting around a television or enforcing healthier habits.

2. App designers should set age restrictions or make age appropriate versions of apps.
I've seen it on snapchat and on another game called Mobiles that my sisters play. These apps have age appropriate versions that have restrictions that protect younger children. Because children are becoming promiscuous at earlier ages, picture sharing apps like Snapchat, whose pictures disappear after a set amount of seconds to never be retrieved again, open the doors for children to send suggestive pictures without the consequence of having them go out into the public or being shared among a larger group of people than intended. If there are restrictions based on age, then it would prevent children from being so promiscuous without outright excluding them from having the app. The cons to this would be the fact that there isn't a way to check and see if someone is faking their age.
People who may oppose to this, once again, include children who would not appreciate being treated so "unfairly"? I'm not to knowledgeable about what goes into the making of an app, but if it takes money to create an age appropriate version, then app designers may object as well because of money.

3. The government should promote a day where no electronics are used so that families can spend time together. They should make the day a day-off of work for parents as well so that there is no reason to use the phone or use their computers for work. The government could shut down the internet for people across the nation, as well as shut down the use of phones during this day. It would encourage families to spend time doing something else as a family, or encourage people to be productive, take time for themselves and truly relax. I see no cons to this proposal, but I'm sure there are some to be had.
The appeal of this solution is that more families would spend time outside of their home.  There are multiple people who may object to this. Namely, employees who want to work for more money, employees and children who need to get work finished that they didn't finish before.

Blog #5 Better known as Thank the Lord because I just caught up

Here we go. I have finally caught up with my prompts. It feels good to get things done.

Now I'm supposed to talk about my argument of fact and I only have the vaguest assumption as to what exactly that is so I'll look it up later, in greater detail.

Misconceptions that I intend to clear up:
 I do not think I've encountered too much of this.

What new information will I be providing?
 Nothing that hasn't already been researched, of course, but for my peers, I hope to bring to their attention that children go through multiple periods of development. I want them to look at their younger siblings, if applicable, and really think twice about the amount of time they're spending attached to their video games or the television. It is in the age groups of birth-6 years and 11-13 that their development is crucial.

Unknown issues I intend to bring up?
 Everyone knows that the minds of babies are like sponges, but they don't know that after that stage of development, children continue to grow and discover themselves and become more aware of the world, but how can children learn to function in a world they hardly ever see because their noses are glued to a bright little screen on their phone.
 As kids mature and go into their preteen years, they stop being so egocentric and this is where they're supposed to learn how to function as human beings who can problem solve and think in abstract ways, but there is no way that's going to happen if all they're doing is shouting profanities over their headsets as someone lands a headshot on their character in Call of Duty.
 This is where kids begin to lack empathy or proper mental processes and this is a serious problem.

What I want to make people understand is that games are fun, yes, but there absolutely has to be a limit, especially for kids undergoing crucial developmental points. A parent should NOT hand their Ipad over to keep their two year old quiet and a parent should also PAY ATTENTION to the ratings of certain video games. I mean, really. Don't complain about your kid's foul mouth when he probably learned it right off the video game.

Facts that will convince the audience will consist of lots of statistics that I need to get around to compiling.

Facts that I still need are more statistics and further proof that kids become developmentally AND emotionally stinted if they spend most of their developmental periods with their eyes glued to a bright screen, whatever it may display.

Blog #4 A.K.A "Hey! Look! I'm catching up."

Was this blog due before the annotated bibliography? Now that I read over the prompt for this blog, I kinda wish I did it before I attempted anything else. I suppose it could still help in the long run.

My first source advocated creating a balance between time spent around technology and time spent with actual human beings. This is most important for children as they undergo important developmental periods.
It was in this source that I learned that children have two important stages of development-- one that begins from birth to age six and another that begins at age eleven until thirteen. And it is definitely not good to put a kid in front of a t.v for a couple of hours that you could be playing with it and imparting your human behaviors on them. A t.v is not a baby-sitter and while a kid won't come out acting like a t.v, they'll kind of just end up lacking in cognitive skills and empathetic reactions.

The second article did a lot to back up the first and added to it as well by touching on how too much technology can affect a kid as they grow beyond primary developmental stages. They start spacing out in class, fail at socializing, and begin misbehaving as well. This article reminds me of arguments that I hear all the time about kids who play too many video games end up becoming aggressive teenagers, or worse yet, aggressive children.

The last article takes an interesting spin on things by switching the perspective and giving us the point of view from a group of kids all aged from 11-17. We hear the stories from parents all the time, but this article gives us a different look at how kids in the above stated age range react to the amount of indecency in technology these days. It has become common place to explore your sexuality from behind a bright little screen on your phone, but that's not the only thing that kids are being exposed to and a lot of them tell their own little stories of experiences they've had in being exposed to indecency on the web. A lot of them have become desensitized to it. It's too common for them to care.

With the information I've gathered, I've come to the conclusion that I need to slightly tweak my argument. Now writing about the behavioral problems in kids who spend too much time using entertainment technology sounds a lot easier than writing an argument about the difficulties in raising kids in a world where entertainment technology rules. It still kinda has the same ring to it, but I feel the newer argument is a bit more specific and finding sources for it might be easier.

Blog #3 This is only 17 days late. It could have been worse...

Hello, all. Late blog is pretty late despite what the title says.

Anyways, sometimes I lack the motivation to do this kind of stuff because I like to make myself believe that I work better in the chaos that is my mind. This stuff is actually helpful though and I have to remind myself to keep up with these things.

Now, here I will talk about the wonderful adventure I had in searching for some sources. I say that with the utmost sarcasm.

Suddenly, I regret picking my topic.

At first, using terms like "Raising kids around technology" didn't yield many results so I had to take my prompt and really think about what it was that I wanted to find out in order to get some results.

I typed things that dealt with behavioral problems linked with an excess time spent in front of the television and similar electronics, including cellphones.

This is where it became difficult to find just the right sources. First of all, there were a lot of unrelated sources to sift through in order to get just the right ones and even then, it was hard to look for something that didn't make me seem like a hypocrite since I'm an avid video gamer myself.

Come to think of it, it wouldn't really have mattered in the end, but it made me feel guilty, personally.

Instead, I chose the sources that focused on the effects that electronics had on the development of young children and technology's role in desensitizing growing kids to things that people from my generation, and definitely those older than me, would never have been exposed to.

The things I learned and read were actually pretty interesting. While I already knew that the minds of developing babies were like sponges, the articles I read, emphasized the importance of human contact.

And like many mothers have probably articulated before, video games are actually pretty bad sometimes, but it goes without saying that this is why they have ratings that insist certain games not be bought for kids. I mean, I wouldn't buy my twelve year old Gears of War.

Introducing! A topic I'll have to talk about for an entire semester, Lord help me.

Okay! Let's get down to business to defeat the huns.










All joking aside, this semester in my English 1302 class, we'll have to figure out a way to talk about a topic we'll spend the entire semester working on and I have chosen to talk about the struggle that is raising a child in a world where technology rules.

Obviously, technological advancement is important for the betterment of life, but for every pro there is a con and one of those comes in the form of technology used for entertainment and the negative effects they have on children, namely, making them lazier, less imaginative, and much less willing to go out and appreciate the world.

I won't lie. Video games are a big part of my life and were an even bigger part when I was a kid and remain prevalent in my family with all my younger sisters, so I see what its done to us, first hand and to help bring my point across in my essay, along with these experiences, I have a list of questions that I hope to find answers to.

1. Are video games, cell phones, and other electronic devices, used for entertainment, too readily available to kids?
2. What do parents think of handing/buying young kids a phone, an ipad, or video games?
3. Why do children feel such an overwhelming need to own a phone or a game?
4. Are parents thinking of the potential consequences of their purchases?
5. Are parents educated/aware of the ratings of video games or the themes prevalent?
6. Are parents stressing an equal amount of time spent playing outdoors and time spent playing video games?

In evaluating these questions, some, I feel, are more important to find answers to/think about and delve deeper into.

Question number three has more to do with peer pressure, in a sense. Let's say there are two kids in a classroom and one owns a phone for x reason, soon enough, kids being kids and wanting the world for themselves, all start wanting or asking for a phone. The same goes for the latest video game or console.

Question number four is also of high importance to me because, being an avid web-surfer, I've seen too many news articles dealing with children who've sent each other nudes. These are kids who probably don't have much to show off, to begin with, but know that that's something that is commonly done so they say, "Hey! I'm gonna do that too." Aside from nudity, I've seen a lot of screencaps on other blogging sites that make fun of Elementary school kids who have a Facebook, Tumblr, etc., account and are really vulgar on them, asking older girls for nudes, talking trash, and getting into things they shouldn't be at such a young age. It just makes me wonder if parents are aware of the things these youngsters are up to nowadays.

Question number five is important because most parents don't put the effort into learning about a game before buying it for their kids. Some video games are rated as such for excessive violence, blood, and more often than not, nudity and inappropriate/adult situations. The themes of certain video games are also inappropriate for children.

This topic, I believe, is of ultimate importance because children these days are growing up to be rude, lazy, aggressive, nasty little things. Some of it is attributed to the way a parent raises them, but more often I've linked a rotten/misbehaved child to their activities. I find it essential that I go into depth with this topic in order to bring an awareness to this problem and offer solutions, pointers, and enlighten people/offer alternatives, because these kids will grow up one day and have to function in society, but are these rude little kids the kind of people we want running around the world?

In conclusion, I am studying the struggle of raising a child around technology because I'm trying to find out how to find the balance between time spent with electronics and time spent being more productive and healthy, in order to perhaps find an answer as to why children are growing up as rude as they are and to maybe find a remedy to the problem at hand.

Who I am, What I do, What I love.

Hey readers, my name is Krystal and this is where I'll be, apparently, posting a lot of stuff for my English 1302 class. I'm a Freshman at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas and I have just started Spring semester. My major is Music Therapy and I realize that not a lot of people know what that is exactly, so I'll tell you a little about it.

Music therapy, as I've begun to understand it, is the use of music in a therapeutic setting. This definition seems really vague and simple, but as I've just started on my venture to become a music therapist, that's how I've come to understand what it is.

Music has been proven to heal, sedate, and stimulate and can be used in various settings, from helping the elderly to keep their minds active and retain memories, to helping underdeveloped children develop their motor skills.

I came across this while trying to decide which path I should take in my college education. Should I continue with music, which has been my passion since I was 9? Or should I go into psychology, help those who need it, as I've always loved? Music therapy mixes both, splendidly.

Apart from my passion for music and human behavior, I love the English language, literature, and definitely writing.

My mind is always spinning and grinding its gears and I like to jot down every idea on paper. I love to write and I appreciate the writing of others. It's in the flow of the words from which my attraction stems.

I could write, and write, and write.

However, I do dislike writing for school assignments. Some topics stifle creativity or don't pique my interest enough. I write because it's fun, not because I have to do research on something. Alas, as a college student, it's not something I can help. Oh well!