growing upon the internet

Hey guess this is me trying to lend a helping hand to any one who needs it. I have no clue how to upload a powerpoint presentation on this site but i do have an essay i did for my cs12 for anyone who is interested in doing second life or something based on the children and technology here it goes. i can get you the link for the broadcast as well if you would like


Leeann Barrett
Cs12
The PBS broadcast that we were watching is mainly focused on the internet and what is doing to our up and coming society. The documentary targeted some key aspects which are parents not being aware of what their children are doing, children being sucked in and not being aware of the effects of their actions, online predators, the effects of parents taking action and the way their children are responding.
The first thing about the documentary that I find interesting is the comment made about the smart classrooms and how they cannot successfully function or teach a class room of students a lesson without this technology. There is a man that basically mocks the teaching of students with a single teacher and a piece of chalk as insufficient. I personally cannot relate to that because all of my life I have been taught with that board and the piece of chalk. I was and still am able to learn with no problem. A social studies teacher in the documentary said that he has to keep up and entertain his students in order to cut through all the cyber junk and actually get them to learn. With me I think that all of those computers in the room and students basically emailing teachers the answers to questions takes away from: social skills, makes students inpatient and it is encouraging children to be on the computer 24/7. I know that if I were in that class with the computer in front of me. I would not pay attention and would be on AIM or face book updating something or looking at pictures. Something more intriguing than a teacher touching some board that has touch screen notes.
This leads to the other point that the documentary is bringing out. They stressed on the point that children would push everything aside just to go on the internet. There is a High School student in who says that if there was no internet he would not know what to do with himself, however, he goes on to say that he has no time to read a book. He would rather go on a website and read the revised version there. Teachers have tried to stop this from happening by doing things like blocking websites and making students submit papers to websites that detect plagiarism. But, how can you really block a site and to what extent and you justify yourself in telling someone that they are cheating. And this is the problem that the documentary faces. The internet is so unmonitored and free that one cannot tell another what and what not to look at. It is so easily accessible that you can go almost anywhere and get internet access. Even if you tell a student or block the websites the school, nine times out of ten the student will go to some other outlet in order to retain this information.
This does not only make teachers fret but it scares parents. Parents begin to wonder what their children are doing in this private world. Parents lose a sense of control because of the internet. Parents can go as far as taking computers out of their child house and using parental controls but, the children are smarter than the adults. They can hack into to parental controls or they can just simply go to a friend’s house, a library or to school and use the computers there. Internet is said to have caused “the greatest generation gap since rock” and this is because the parents cannot keep up with the children and children aren’t willing to share the knowledge and if they do it is only select pieces of information.
Because of this children see the internet as something that they control. Something made just for them to lash out and express the thoughts that they do not feel comfortable telling anyone else. Children do not really notice that even though no one is listening and the internet does not answer back, people are reading these blogs and watching these videos and come up with judgments of your character. The internet gives the feeling that you are talking to a blank screen when really, instead of talking to no one, you are talking to everyone. Children are sometimes so vulnerable that they write everything about themselves then when someone comments on their blog, picture or video it gives the feeling that they have a new friend that is theirs only that they can say anything to. The begin trusting someone that can be anyone. This is where internet predators come in. The look and feed over children like these. It is found that over numerous conversations with these people children are almost willing and begging to meet with these people. Some even what to run away with them. They tell children all that they want to hear and nothing less. All of this is to gain their trust, gain their liking and to get the child in the position that they want them to be.
In the real world children experience many different things and suffer from peer pressure almost every day. The internet allows these students to become whoever they want to be or wish they were. This can be a good and a bad influence on children. Some children use to the internet as a refuge from the real world. In the case of Autumn Edow, the internet was a form of self expression. The father commented saying that she is “creating art.” In the real world Edow’s was not like and barely even noticed but, when she found the internet it is as though she transformed and became this whole new person that everyone wanted to know and be. It empowered her and gave her self confidence that she never had before. The internet is where she had her time to shine even though it is not who she really is, she became someone that she loved. Who she loves is the model named Autumn Edow.
This freedom of speech can also be taken in a negative way. In the documentary there were two instances of this negative influence. The first is with the teenage girl who wished to be thinner. She talked about how she would go a website where other anorexic and bulimic people would write, comment and compete about how much weight they lost and how little they ate that day. These weren’t only grown people writing but young teenagers. These websites encourage and support these children making them want to harm themselves more and more.
Another instance is with the boy who was suffering from cyber bullying. This is actually two in one. This boy was not being tormented by one person but he was teased by a group whose sole purpose was to tear him apart and bully him. And this group led the boy to want to kill himself. The boy found a way and did kill himself but, not with the encouragement of another boy who has a site all about killing and suicide. So to any question, want or yearning you have, the internet has an answer to it while parents have no idea about what is going through their child’s mind.
But what happens when parents do find out? In the case of Autumn Edows and the High School Senior, the results were not really good at first and really good in the end. I found out that when parents find out the go ballistic and to the extreme. One was so surprised to the point that in one case one parent when and decided to email all the other parents in the neighborhood and this got everyone in trouble. In the case of the high school student he felt and told his mother that she ruined his high school years. She appears as though she doesn’t understand because in her heart she thinks that she was doing the just thing. No she reports that she is quiet and does not really talk or share his feeling. It’s as though he closed up. And this is just like Edows. When her mother found out, she made her delete all her files and pictures in front of her which was basically deleting her from her world. Her parents have come to acceptance of her double life however to this day Edows thinks that her parents will never really understand her. This show that she really does not trust them and that there is a void between them.
There is no real way of controlling teens or to monitor the internet. The internet is pushed so much in our society that it’s almost too hard to remember a time where there were no computers and no internet. What is funny to me in the documentary is when the parents were asking the children to give them the passwords. Parents should be savvy enough to know that their children will say no and is they do give then their password nine times out of ten, it will be a fake password or their child is planning to change it in the next three minutes. My views on the internet are neutral. Yes it could be a little safer however, who is to say who can go on the internet and who is allowed to write what. The accused can easily say that this is them exercising their freedom of speech. I just that it as whatever you seek you will find and the answer is the internet.