Interneducation

In South Korea, internet gaming addiction has become a serious problem. Teenagers “game” for hours at a time, mostly at internet cafes where they can play on high speed internet for cheap.  It has gotten so bad that some students have died due to extended gaming.  In response to this, students are now taught at a young age how to use the internet and proper internet etiquette, or netiquette.  They have classes on how to properly use the internet, have signs around school with messages of proper netiquette, and they have the children sing songs about proper netiquette.  The school curriculum relates to digital citizenship because they both are about how to responsibly use the internet and the proper ways to interact online.

 I think learning netiquette could possibly benefit a society in reducing addiction, create better internet communities, and make the internet more beneficial to society.  Learning netiquette at a young age could plant the importance of proper internet use in our mind so we have a stronger resistance to the distractions.  There are so many distractions on the internet and it plays such a strong role in our society that staying off it will become nearly impossible.  So I think in response to this, it would be best to embrace the fact that the internet is everywhere and that we cannot avoid it; but what we CAN do is learn how to properly and responsibly use it so that even though we are on it all the time, we will not be distracted by things like facebook every 5 minutes or watch youtube videos for hours when we have something we need to do.  It may or may not work, but it’s worth a shot right?