iPad Addiction

In a recent New York Times article “A Parent’s Struggle With a Child’s iPad Addiction”, a confused father wrote about his 6-year-old’s potential iPad addiction. The father uses the word “addiction” because when the iPad is taken away his son gets “bizarrely upset… out-of-character upset…that’s what makes me think he’s addicted”. While many would question the wisdom in letting a child use an iPad, the father contends that his son is not using this new technology to play violent video games, but rather educational apps, and while playing “he’s happy. He’s quiet. He’s engaged”.

According to the father, his son is encouraged “to play creative apps-and most of the time, he does”. The apps mention in the article include Puppet Pals, which is a free creative video app that allows children to make short films using animated cartoons, and EasyBeats, a music app that allows users to create their own complex rhythms one layer at a time.

How could these types of stimulating games be bad? Is taking the iPad away from his son really the right thing to do? Is a gadget or game automatically bad for children just because it is electronic? These are the questions posed by this article and it will be up to future research in this field to answer them for us.

Hacker's Paradise

Since the creation of the Internet the number of users has continually grown every year. In a recent study conducted by the University of Southern California in 2010 it was found that 82% of Americans now use the Internet on a regular basis. With ever-increasing numbers of people logging in, it is inevitable that there will be individuals who will seek to use this new connectivity for malicious reasons.

In the New York Times article “New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users”, discusses the ease with which hackers may seize personal information. Wi-Fi hotspots in particular make accessing users information extremely easy for hackers. According to the article in the New York Times, a recently designed program called Firesheep can be downloaded for free off the Internet and, if used at a Wi-Fi hotspot, will allow the user to steal the confidential information of people accessing the Internet through the hotspot.

In the past, hacking required high-tech equipment and an advanced knowledge of how computers worked. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Simple, free programs that are readily available over the Internet are now all that is needed to steal valuable personal information. Due to this increasing security risk it is more important than ever to safeguard our online information and to verify that the websites we visit are properly protected.