Facebook Now Remark Teenager To Fired Out

A 16-year-old girl from Essex was fired after she described her office job as "boring" on her Facebook page.

Kimberley Swann, 16, of Clacton, had been working at Ivell Marketing & Logistics, in Clacton, for three weeks before being fired on Monday.

"I think they've stooped quite low," she said.

The firm's Steve Ivell said of the decision: "Her display of disrespect and dissatisfaction undermined the relationship and made it untenable."

Miss Swann said: "You shouldn't really be hassled outside work. It was only a throw-away comment.

"I came home from work one day, sat on the computer and said something about my job being boring."

Details were passed to her employers after she allowed colleagues access to her page, Miss Swann said, adding that she was not given the chance to explain.

Her mother, Janette, 41, said: "I think she's been treated totally unfairly. She didn't mention the company's name.

"This is a 16-year-old child we're talking about. She says Clacton is boring but we're not going to throw her out of the house for it."

Mr Ivell said: "Ivell Marketing is a small, close-knit family company and it is very important that all the staff work together in harmony.

"Had Miss Swann put up a poster on the staff notice board making the same comments and invited other staff to read it there would have been the same result."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said employers needed "thicker skins" in relation to social networking websites.

He said: "Most employers wouldn't dream of following their staff down the pub to see if they were sounding off about work to their friends."

New study: Media exposure harms kids

You should think twice before you park your tot in front of the tube--or buy your teen a Play Station for the holidays. A new study commissioned by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit advocacy group, reveals that heavy media exposure leads to negative health effects in children and increases the risk of obesity, sexual activity, attention deficit disorder, and more.

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and California Pacific Medical Center reviewed 173 of the strongest studies from the past 28 years that examined the relationship between media exposure and seven health outcomes: childhood obesity, tobacco use, drug use, alcohol use, low academic achievement, sexual behavior, and attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. The reviewers looked at studies on all types of media but most of the quality ones found involved television, movies, and music. There were fewer studies available that examined the impact of Internet and video games, and no studies on the impact of cell phones.

In 80 percent of the studies, greater media exposure is associated with negative health outcomes for children and adolescents. The strongest relationship was found between media and obesity. Of the 73 studies that examined the relationship between screen time and childhood obesity, 86 percent revealed a strong relationship between increased screen time and obesity. Of the 14 articles evaluating media and sexual behavior, 93 percent found that children with greater media exposure have sex earlier.

"The average parent doesn't understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age," says Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, which helped finance the study.

Most kids today spend nearly 45 hours per week with media, compared with 17 hours with parents and 30 hours in school. The study authors say parents need to monitor their children's media use and explain to their kids why too much time in front of the screen is harmful.

Common Sense Media offers these tips to help parents manage their kids' screen time:

1. Keep an eye on how long kids spend online, in front of the TV, watching movies, playing video games. The secret to healthy media use is to establish time limits and stick to them--before your kids turn it on and tune in. That means keeping TV, computers, and other media out of kids' bedrooms. You're not there to monitor their behavior, and it's hard to enforce limits.

2. Use media together and talk about what you see, hear, and read. Whenever you can, watch, play, listen, and surf with your kids. Talk about the content of TV shows and video games. Help kids connect what they learn in the media to events and other activities in which they're involved, like playing sports and creating art, in order to broaden their understanding of the world.

3. Be a role model. When kids are around, set an example by using media the way you want them to use it. Don't bring cell phones and Blackberries to the dinner table and turn the TV off when it's not actively being watched.

4. Make smart media choices, like active games that get your kids moving as much as possible. And of course, encourage your kids to get outside and play as many real games as they do virtual ones.

Will Facebook turn our kids into social cowards?

I'll never forget walking in on two girls screaming and hissing at each other in the bathroom at my elementary school. When they started to reach for each other's hair, I threw myself in between them and they stopped fighting--probably because they were so surprised that the shy, meek girl stepped in. Oddly, I have drawn great confidence from that mere moment--probably because it's the only time I have ever been a superhero. Whenever my natural timid self sets in, I think back on that incident. If you can stop girls from cat fighting, you can do anything, right?

I know confrontations occur between girls in today's schools but if you were in the fifth grade with a computer at home, wouldn't you deal with your social problems on Facebook? (I would!) Well, maybe parents don't let fifth graders use Facebook, but any clash among friends in high school would be dealt with more easily this way. Another girl asks your crush to the Sadie Hawkins? Post a nasty note on her "wall" saying that she has a highly contagious foot fungus. You would never have to confront the enemy face-to-face. Yes, technology seems like a more comfortable way to deal with a confrontational situation. But is it good that today's children are learning to navigate the complicated social web through Facebook?

The answer is no, according to an article in yesterday's London Guardian. The story is primarily based on a statement by Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, who said:

"Real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogs, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction."

What I encountered in my elementary school bathroom was certainly messy and I assume all three of us remember that day and learned a lesson from the experience (if I remember correctly, the two fighting girls went on to be friends). Imagine how it might have gone down on Facebook. Two friends start writing mean stuff on each other's walls and then I step in with some "What are you doing right now?" statement: "Amy thinks 'so and so' and 'so and so' should stop writing mean comments on each other's walls." And with that, I would have lost out on my one-and-only superhero moment.