http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/pregnancytest.asp(picture)

 

Prosocial Behavior is behavior that we give and take from the society without even noticing especially with the Internet.  How many times did you look for materials, like videos lesson for you class that you were taking because you did not understand what the Professor explained and felt embarrassed to ask? Or have you ever opened a funding website for patients that have cancer or donate money to these organization through the internet? Those examples are what prosocial behavior is. The article “The kindness of Strangers: Prosocial Behavior on the Internet written by Lee Sproull, Cary Conley and Jae Yum Moon, explains that the term Prosocial behavior is “motivated purely by the desire to increase another person’s welfare, egoistic prosocial behavior is motivated by the desire to increase one’s own welfare or that of one’s group or cause through helping others” (P148). I think the internet have helped millions of people because there are many people that don’t feel comfortable asking someone for help. It is more personalized even though there is no person interactions. They can just type the question on the internet and they will have an answer less in 2 seconds. An example of how the social media can save a man’s life is described in the article “A young man takes a pregnancy test — and discovers he has testicular cancer” by  Susan Perry . It is about a bored man that decided to take his ex- girlfriend’s pregnancy test and found out that he was positive, which the young man thought was hilarious. He told his female friend and she posted it on the social media site called Reddit. Someone committed on her post that she should tell her friend to go and check it because he might have testicular cancer. She told her friend and he went to the doctor and found out he had testicular cancer, an extremely rare type called Choriocarcima . I think this is amazing that social media can help others when it is unexpected! If she did not post it he would have never known that he had cancer and he could have died. I also found another example:  a video about this mother that took a picture of her daughter and posted it on Facebook, and her friends committed on the post and told her to go to an eye doctor. The girl went to the doctor and found that she has a medical issue and if she did not take care of it in the early stage she can be blind in that eye.

Overall, the expansion of the technology has given people that are considered the “outsiders” of the community a way to reach for help. They can reach for help in an anonymous way were they don’t have to face a person because it might feel less comfortable than others. Therefore, they can type and ask questions without the other person on the other side judging them by their race or personality. When people surf on the internet everyone feel equal to each other no matter of their ethnicity or race.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4L4sjLms18 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4L4sjLms18]