Scholarly article summary

The scholarly article I chose to write about that's related to my inquiry is called "Trends in online social networking: adolescent use of MySpace over time" written by Justin W. Patchin and Sameer Hinduja.This article is related to internet safety.

I came to the conclusion that this article was scholarly through a number of reasons. First off the article is written by professors from different Universities. Second, the purpose of the article was clear in evaluating previous research in some meaningful way. Third, it includes an abstract along with charts and graphs that represent data. Fourth, It's a pretty lengthy article that also includes in-text citations. Finally the article includes a pretty lengthy works cited list.

The article is mainly concerned with the amount of information available to others in Myspace For example, In 2006, the authors decided to do a research analysis of about 2432 randomly sampled adolescent Myspace users profiles to determine what types of information they were putting up. In conclusion of the study they found that most of the adolescents were making good choices of the type of information they would share online. They also made a follow up study to see if anything had changed within one year. Pathcin and Hinduja came to the conclusion that the "youth were expressing more discretion in posting personal information on Myspace and more youth are limiting access to their profile".

Overall, I believe this article does successfully convey a successful rhetorical message to the audience and provides the information in depth.

Computer privacy and saftey

Many of the users of the net either do not realize or do not think about the risks that are at hand from using it. However, there are many things out there that can cause problems for those out there using technology. An example of something that can cause problems would be one of the thousands of viruses there are out there.

The amount of damage viruses can cause range from being very little to very high. Usually cookies and Trojans are the ones that cause little amounts of damage. However there are some of those out there that get the fancy names because of the amount of damage they cause. Some of these viruses can shut down your computer for good or even monitor what you do online which leads to lost data and identity theft. These viruses can be activated by visiting the wrong sites online, clicking on unknown links, and even e-mail.

The LoveLetter worm is said to be the most damaging virus to come across the net affecting a large number of computers and causing the most damage up to date. This virus was particularly spread through email, internet chat systems, and through other shared file systems. It was sent through an attachment with the email subject line saying "ILOVEYOU". The virus infected things like .gif and .jpg files along with changing registry keys and hiding MP3 files.


















To help avoid such dangerous things users should be cautious about what sources to trust online as well taking precaution on what e-mails should be opened. There is also a number of anti-virus software out there that can help delete and prevent viruses from being spread. I hope you take advantage of this information and make it worth while to be safe and smart.