In the eyes of Disney, children are commodities. Giroux’s article illustrates Disney’s strategic tactics to grow their business with one thing in mind: profit. They influence children, trying to shape identities, with a goal of creating life-long consumers. The image of innocence is very deceiving. Turkle’s Ted Talk explores the isolating effects of technology. She explained how claims of technology creating more human connections are inaccurate; that technology actually harms us. The connections are empty, devoid of real human contact. People avoid and hide from each other and from themselves by using their phones. We need to take care that technology does not erode at our relationships with ourselves and others. Boyd’s video looks at the ways teens understand and practice privacy. Privacy is usually thought of as controlling the flow of information. Boyd discusses how it is more about controlling social situations. There is a misconception that teens don’t care about privacy. There are different ways they enact privacy. Teens are good at coding. They learn to hide information in plain sight by encoding their posts so that adults won’t understand what they are communicating. Parents want to protect teens and end up restricting their access to public spaces, but Boyd encourages teaching teens how to handle privacy rather than forcing it upon them. The Dark Side video talks about the growth of the gaming industry yet most companies in that industry have horrible working conditions. Employees are expected to work long hours with no overtime, especially when new games are being developed. With some games, like Fortnight, there are constantly new elements of the game being developed, which means constant crunch time. After new games are released, employees are often fired without notice or severance. Discrimination and sexism are also rampant in the industry. These conditions are not well known among gamers.
When I was growing up my parents took me to Disneyland several times over the course of my K-12 years. I have good memories of those vacations. The Disney influence was strong. I was enamored by the princesses, imaginary lands, and story-based attractions. Their psychologists and anthropologists are good at what they do. However, I didn’t have the same exposure to the volume of Disney products and movies that children have today. I didn’t have a lot of Disney products and we didn’t have cable TV so I didn’t watch a lot of Disney movies. Returning to Disneyland as an adult it’s easy to see the main intent of the company, to grow their business and increase profit.
Does the information about poor working conditions in the gaming industry change your view of playing online games? Will it influence where you purchase games from?
Sylvia's blog 
I’m aware of several video game companies and developers having awful practices both in the workplace and in business decisions, and it’s a difficult thing to avoid. Based on interviews and exposes on workplaces, there is a culture of permanent crunch time and overwork, with some (very successful) developers priding themselves on how much they work. Unless there are regulations placed, workers unionize, or there is a rapid change in the culture of video game development, these people will continue to suffer. I myself have boycotted several companies and publishers for their anti-consumer and anti-worker practices, but due to the general culture of programming, it’s essentially impossible to find a game coded completely by fair and comfortable workplaces.
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Growing up I also had the opportunity to go to Disneyland quite a bit well. It was always a fun and enjoyable experience for myself, and noticeably, for everyone around me. Disney has such a strong effect on people, that it even extends out to the mood and happiness. This strong impact isn’t just limited to their theme parks, but even the shows and movies they produce, and even from those they have a platform that extends out into many other businesses. They control media in so many aspects. Like with owning Marvel and Star Wars, which are both HUGE platforms for influence. Not only that, but Disney is considered one of the 5 major media companies of the world, owning tv channels and companies that you wouldn’t think they would own. Things like: ABC, A&E, ESPN. It is scary to think that this one individual company can control so much of our youth’s happiness and entertainment, considering there is a lot of influence that people take from media. It really makes me think, like ” what types of things have been subtly influenced by this media platform that was articulated purposely by the media producers”.
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